Ptfl-lb^ 



The College Course in the 
Prin ciples of Education 



DR. JOHN A. MacVANNEL 

Adjunct Professor of the Philosophy of Education in Teachers College, 
Columbia University, New York City. 



Reprinted from 

THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

A Journal of Secondary Education 
February 1906 



Chicago 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

ipo6 



The College Course in the 
Principles of Education 



DR. JOHN A. MacVANNEL 

Adjunct Professor ot" the Philosophy of Education in Teachers College, 
Columbia University, New York City. 



Reprinted from 

THE SCHOOL REl^IEW 

A Journal of Secondary Education 
February 1906 



Chicago 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

ipo6 



.\'='' 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAR 31 1906 

opyriirftl Entry 

CUSS^CG- XXc. No, 

COPY B. 



Copyright 1906 By 
The University of Chicago 



Published February 1906 



Composed and Printed by 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 



Education as a subject for college and university study is in a 
condition which is at once beset with difficulties and at the same 
time hopeful in its possibilities. The difficulties arise from the com- 
plexity of the factors involved and the number of special scientific 
disciplines which must be called upon for methods and results. 
When the purpose of education could be settled by metaphysics , or 
its data and methods by psychology alone, the task of the theory of 
education was comparatively simple. But with the recognition and 
demand for biological, sociological, and physiological aspects, as 
well as for the reconstruction of the ethical and psychological aspects 
of the problem, the task is far more difficult. It is precisely this 
need of reconstructing, this demand for recognition of broader as- 
pects, which makes the situation full of interest and promise. It is 
this which should make the study of educational principles one of 
the most stimulating and broadening of subjects. It is just this 
which should give such deep significance to the work of education, as 
a whole, as to awaken first of all teachers, and through them the 
larger public, to its importance. It is just because the paper of Dr. 
MacVannel seems to me to be very suggestive of the broader as- 
pects of educational theory that I have asked the publishers of the 
School Review to reprint it for the use of my classes, and I feel con- 
fident that it will appeal to many others as it has to me, 

J.4MES H. Tufts. 

The University of Chicago. 



REPRINTED FROM 

THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

A JOURNAL OF SECONDARY EDUCATION 



VOLUME XIV ■ppRPFTAPV ^ r\r\(^ WHOLE 

NUMBER 2 rTLOrS-Ui^iXI, 1 yUO NUMBER 131 



THE COLLEGE COURSE IN THE PRINCIPLES OF 
EDUCATION' 



DR. JOHN A. MacVANNEL 

Adjunct Professor of the Philosophy of Education in Teachers College, Columbia 

University, New York City 



The rough notes offered in this paper will, it is hoped, furnish a 
working basis for a discussion of the topic : What should constitute 
a college course in the principles of education, its relation to cognate 
subjects, its limits, and the more important sources of material ? A 
course in the philosophy of education differs from one in the prin- 
ciples of education not so much in its materials as in its standpoint, 
and in its more persistent endeavor to indicate the organic unity as 
well as the possibility and implications of the educational process. 
It must be conceded at the outset that it is impossible to make an 
outhne of a course in educational theory, whether elementary or ad- 
vanced, without assuming a point of view in regard to the general 
problem and its method of treatment as a whole. On the one hand 
there are those who maintain that the study of education is valuable 
only in so far as it is amenable to scientific treatment — understanding 
by such treatment the quantitative study of education. On the other 
hand there are those who conceive its more fruitful study to consist 
in treating educational theory as an integral part of a wider phi- 
losophy of society, while not ignoring the necessities of scientific treat- 
ment. To the present writer this latter method commends itself as, 

'These papers are printed for discussion by the Society of College Teachers of 
Education at a meeting to be held in Louisville, Ky., Februan," 28 and March i, 1906. 

5 



6 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

on the whole, the more satisfactory, and indeed, if education is to be 
seen in its right relations in human experience, as the only one pos- 
sible in the long run. The hard and fast distinctions, however, so 
frequently made between science and philosophy cannot be perma- 
nent. Both aim at the organization of experience for the purpose of 
control — the single science within a narrow sphere, philosophy within 
the widest possible area. It seems reasonable to presuppose in col- 
lege seniors the capacity for a study of education in a philosophical 
spirit and yet in accordance with scientific method. 

In the second part of the present paper especially — the part which 
attempts to trace in outline the more important phases of the educa- 
tional problem and its possibilities in affording an elementary course 
in educational principles — it would be extremely difficult to find any- 
thing not already in some measure made common property through 
the writings of our educational leaders. This part undertakes to fur- 
nish a map of the country now being explored by these leaders — a 
rough outline of the general educational problem. It is at best a 
plan of action whose inherent logic is not as yet entirely satisfactory. 
Many possibilities are unprovided for, and there is much omitted 
which should appear in a complete outline of the subject. In many 
cases — for example, the question of the relation of theory to practice, 
to what extent education is a science, and so on — it has been omitted 
arbitrarily. Having come to some agreement concerning the general 
nature and content of educational theory, it may be possible to recog- 
nize somewhat more clearly the form a more precise statement of the 
problem must take, the lines along which a more adequate solution 
of the problem lies, the probable results which such an inquiry may 
attain. As a working hypothesis the present paper may suggest lines 
of criticism or of investigation to those who will make real contribu- 
tions to the subject. 



"What is education, and how are we to educate, either with a 
view to perfect training or to the best life?" The Greeks were the 
first to raise educational practice to clear consciousness, abstracting 
and generalizing its "idea" or principle, and thereby freeing it from 
the thraldom of mere habit and routine. In this way they attained 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION ii 

extended in their application and transformed in the h'ght of an 
enriched experience. 

So far as the present section is concerned, it remains only to direct 
attention to certain of the more prominent features of the outline of 
a course in the principles of education offered as a basis of discussion 
and criticism in the second part of this paper. In the outline itself 
the first place is given to the statement of problems rather than to 
their solution. There is a sense in which it is impossible to formu- 
late our problems, unless we are prepared with at least partial solu- 
tions. It may be admitted, also, that the accurate definition of a 
problem, in education as in philosophy, is a most important factor in 
its solution. Kant regarded complete definitions as the last result of 
philosophy. At any rate, it seems to be true, both in philosophy 
and in education, that results can mean little or nothing to those who 
have not first endeavored to understand the nature and apprf^ciate 
the value of the processes by which they were reached. In educa- 
tion especially, partly owing to the fact that it represents a need both 
universal and fundamental, and partly because its phenomena are, 
from one point of view, of the simplest and most familiar kind, there 
is grave danger at the present time of over-rating the importance of 
finding solutions to its problems, and under-rating the importance of 
seeking them. In working out a theory of education, the attempt 
must be made to co-ordinate all the elements 0} the problem in their 
organic unity. The presence or absence of such unity is one of the 
supreme tests of such a theory. So long as this is not done, one's 
view of educational theory must necessarily remain limited and im- 
poverished. In the somewhat fluctuating and yet progressive condi- 
tion of the theory of the present time, any attempt to bring the mani- 
fold elements of the problem into some kind of unity cannot be 
altogether valueless. Every such attempt, however, will have its 
defects, and but little more than a transient significance. 

I. As was suggested in a previous section, the study of educational 
theory has, until recent years, suffered from the lack of any clearly 
defined principle of method. Following the treatment offered in 
several of the more recent works in education, the present outline 
attempts to indicate in a schematic way how the educational process 
may be given a distinct and vital relationship to the facts of organic 



12 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

and social evolution. In so doing, it is assumed (a) that the educa- 
tional process and the general life-process are both subservient to the 
general law of evolution as the largest generalization yet made in 
scientific views of the world, and (6) that, as a fact of experience, the 
educational process is a part of the wider life-process. The inquiry 
thus becomes essentially this ; How does education come into being ? 
In the attempt to interpret the educational process in the light 
of the doctrine of evolution, emphasis is laid upon two facts: {a) 
the principle oj individuation according to which the movement 
of the evolutionary process takes place. In every process of develop- 
ment there are present the two interrelated and co-operating factors : 
the individual existence in which the development occurs, and the 
situation or environment which affords the stimuli or the conditions 
through which the development takes place. On the one side there 
is the organism with the capacity of response; on th; other there is 
the environment which provides the stimulus. The life-process, for 
the e\olutionist, is a process of adaptation, {h) Emphasis also is laid 
on the significance of the lengthening period of infancy which makes 
the process of adaptation possible. Education, accordingly, is fun- 
damentally the process of adapting an individual organism to a nat- 
ural and human environment, actual or ideal. 

As is suggested in the third section of this paper, to say that w^e 
accept the concept of evolution as a method of studying the world and 
human life may mean much or little. Its true significance can be 
realized only when the general doctrine is submitted to the interpre- 
tation put upon it by philosophy: in other words, when its results are 
brought into relation with the other elements of our experience. It 
would be going beyond the limits of an elementary course in the prin- 
ciples of education to direct attention to any but the more important 
implications of such interpretation; their significance, however, should 
be recognized in the content and organization of such a course. It 
is of fundamental importance for those who underlake the organiza- 
tion of a course in educational theory to recognize that evolution, 
strictly interpreted, is only a law or method according to which a par- 
ticular force or reality manifests itself; it does not attempt to furnish 
any information concerning the ultimate nature of that reality. Edu- 
cational theory, however, being normative in it'; character, implies 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 13 

an estimation of reality. Into it enter judgments 0} worth as well as 
judgments oj jact. Our idea of becoming (individual, social, cosmic, 
what not) must be finally determined by our conception of that existing 
reality which underlies the process. According to the usual proce- 
dure of the evolutionary method of study, the individual is not neces- 
sarily any more than the transitory resultant of physical processes. 
Science, of course, by the very nature of its procedure, presupposes a 
true objective reasonableness in the world of phenomena. Consist- 
ently, also, it recognizes in the latter the varied manifestation of one 
principle or energy. Some scientists, indeed, regard these phenomena 
as brought sufficiently within our ken as to see in them a progression 
toward a goal that is recognizable by human intelligence. But 
science, as such, is for the most part concerned with co-existences and 
sequences of phenomena; with the form rather than the matter, the 
method of behavior rather than the inner nature of the reality which 
lies back of the method. (See also section II, § 2, and section III.) 
2. The outline, further, implies the conception of the unity of 
the educational process with the wider social process. It aims to 
suggest the parallelism between educational theory and the wider 
psychological, social, and philosophical theory of the period. It as- 
sumes that no theory, ethical, philosophical, educational, can be 
developed in isolation from other lines of intellectual activity, or 
understood when isolated from the human conditions which produce 
it. It is a matter of common knowledge, moreover, that there can- 
not be any adequate appreciation of the educational theories of the 
present without some understanding of the foundations of such 
theories in the needs and aspirations, the intellectual and social ten- 
dencies, of the past. To reach any definite conclusions in regard to 
fundamental tendencies in the present, a study is necessary of the 
previous conditions through which they passed in order to reach the 
present. For in any study involving personal and sccial progress 
there may be recognized certain well-defined conceptions formerly 
maintained, which, compared with the present, will indicate with a 
fair degree of security the line of future advances. In this is to be 
found sufficient reason why a course in the principles of education 
should be preceded by, or be parallel with, a course in the history of 
education. Any treatment of educational principles must be based 



14 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

upon the conception of education as a dynamic, growing process, a 
a part of the changing social situation ; thus its theory is in turn a func- 
tion of the wider intellectual and spiritual life of the particular period. 

3. It would appear that the view of mind furnished by evolu- 
tionary idealism, according to which mind is not a mere product or 
epiphenomenon, nor a mere transcendental, spiritual substance 
which (so far as actual experience is concerned) is a pure abstraction, 
is the one of greatest service in educational theory. The facts of the 
educational process imply a conception of mind as a concrete specific 
activity constantly directed to the accomplishment of something, and 
not only the bearer of the experience process, but an efficient agent 
in its furtherance. In the light of all that is said in the outline con- 
cerning the place and significance of social theory, it is scarcely neces- 
sary to remark that psychological theory is but one of the sources 
of material of educational theory. 

4. In accordance with the view of mind advanced in the preced- 
ing paragraph, it will not be difficult to recognize why in the outline 
the implications of the fact that the process of individual experience 
lies within the process of social hfe. Throughout the course of his 
personal development the individual is dependent on his social re- 
lationships. The self is a bi-polar unity, having within itself the 
terminal aspects of a unitary personal relation, the so-called ego and 
alter, the latter being also part of a common thought-and-action- 
content. Thus the individual is in society to the degree that society 
is in the individual. The social life or continuum, with its subsid- 
iary processes of differentiation and integration, is a life manifesting 
itself through a system of organs, and these organs, in coming to 
realize the community 0/ the social life, become social members or per- 
sons; and the social life becomes integrated and unified only in so far 
as its members become partakers of the social purpose and yield 
themselves up to the realization of that purpose. It thus becomes 
apparent how social theory, along with psychological theory, becomes 
the second great source of material for educational theory, since 
through a study of the social process are discerned the great lines of 
haman interest and activity, the nature of the social purpose, the 
latent possibilities of human life, in the realization of which educa- 
tion will more and more be consciously employed. 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 15 

5. Another element emphasized in the outHne is the necessity of 
what may be called a chart 0} civilization to any adequate statement 
of the subject-matter of the curriculum. Civilization represents the 
achieved culture of the race, its spiritual possessions. These posses- 
sions are the inheritance of the individual, becoming his own, how- 
ever, in a large and fruitful way only through education. The edu- 
cation of the individual is, therefore, the process of adjustment to or 
participation in the world of social relationships and in the fund of 
social experience, the ideals and methods, which those relationships 
conserve. In this conception of adjustment, of participation, of 
social interaction, as the essential element in the educational 
process, is found the unity of aim, of materials, and of method in 
education. 

. II 

In turning from this general statement of the place of education 
in college and university study to the problem of the actual " con- 
tent" of a college course in che principles of education, it must at 
once be admitted that any outline such as is here presented can but 
furnish mere words along the way. What is written in the second 
portion of this paper may (a) furnish a rough outhne of a course in 
the theory of education which may be loosened or tightened accord- 
ing to specific need; {h) help, with the aid of a little classification, to 
systematize to a degree our knowledge; and (c) furnish a basis for 
criticism. A college course in the principles of education is by no 
means identical with a thoroughgoing course in the philosophy of 
education, and yet the outline here suggested aims to view education 
in its wholeness, in a philosophical spirit and in accordance with 
scientific methods. It need not, of course, be added that the outline 
aims to present a method jor the organization 0} educational ideas 
rather than to increase the store oj injormation concerning them. The 
notes added, within parentheses, here and there may prove suggest- 
ive in some directions, and explicate the general line of thought; 
they are not intended to be exhaustive in any direction whatever. 
The outline is therefore provisional, at best a working hypothesis, a 
possible plan of action, to be justified by results, and is subject to 
both criticism and revision. 



1 6 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

PART I. THE FOUNDATIONS OF ED.UCATION 

I, THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE 

1. The relation of theory to practice. — "Sound practice is sound 
theory unconscious of itself; sound theory is merely sound practice 
conscious of itself." "Action, in the fullest sense, would also be 
theory ; it would be doing with the full consciousness of what we are 
doing." The genetic relation between theory and practice. The 
function of theory to reconstruct and economize practice. The cul- 
tural value of the insight into the idea of education in its organic 
wholeness. 

(The technique of effective practice is ultimately dependent upon principles. 
Professional training in education should aim to give control of the principles or 
the intellectual methods involved in practice rather than the mere mastery of 
technique. It is a commonplace to say that reflection is an integral part of all 
worthy activity. Action in the highest sense includes theory. For an individual 
to trj' to understand any form of human activity does not necessarily separate 
him from that activity, making him a mere theorist; normally it should bring the 
activity home to him more vitally. It should enable him to perform the activity 
with clear consciousness of what he is doing. The study of facts does not imply 
separation from them. It means getting closer to them. In like manner, the 
study of education means its aims, methods, processes, consciously realized and 
brought home to intelligence.) 

2. The nature and purpose of science. — The sentiment of ration- 
ality. Science {a) as knowledge, i. e., a body of systematized facts 
gained through certain methods; (&) as instrument of control, i. e., as 
a body of methods controlling our judgments concerning a particular 
group of facts; (c) as mediatory from one stage of experience to 
another. 

3. The possibility of a science of education. — The so-called dis- 
tinction between the descriptive and the normative sciences. The 
field of education. The relation between the history of education 
and the theory of education. Consideration of the question: How 
far may a science in process of formation be a useful guide ? The 
quantitative study of education Because of the unity of intelligence, 
the method of securing control of experience in one field may assist 
in securing control in any other field. The sciences of physiology, 
psychology, and sociology in their relation to the science of education. 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION i-j 

(Science as a form of human activity arises within experience; the science 
of education arises within our experience in education, and is therefore a func- 
tion of educational practice. The question is often asked: Is there a science 
of education ? a question based upon a special interpretation of the meaning of 
science. It does not apf)ear that the search for a methodical treatment of edu- 
cation is to be abandoned, even though perfection has not been attained at this 
early stage. The science of education is Ihe method thus jar established oj con- 
trolling experience so far as it is concerned with the educational process. The 
theory of education should set forth, not a set of educational categories or 
principles independent of or isolated from one another, but an interrelated sys- 
tem " within which ever)' assertion entitles us to other assertions, and to which 
we are entitled only through other assertions." The science of education aims 
at securing the method by which the educational process may be increasingly con- 
trolled.) 

4. The twofold aspect oj education as a science. — (a) The psycho- 
logical, and {h) the sociological. 

(A feature fundamental to the present outline is the conception of the organic 
unity of the individual and society. The study of the growth of consciousness, 
whether in the race or child, points to the conclusion that the real self is always 
a social self; that the nature of the individual is essentially social; in other words, 
the individual's relations to his fellows are not external attachments of his per- 
sonality, but the source of its inmost content and reality. The completely isolated 
individual, uninfluenced by social forces, does not exist as a fact of experience. 
The ])rocess of education, therefore, is conceived as essentially a process of social 
interaction between the two factors of the experience process, society and the indi- 
vidual.) 

5. The science and the philosophy of education. 

(It may be noted in this connection that in a systematic and thorough-going 
treatment of the subject — by means of the regular college and graduate courses — 
two main divisions would be found — divisions, however, which are not separate, 
but rather stages in the movement of intelligence in its attempt to come to a 
conscious realization of the educational process in human experience: (a) the 
science, dealing with the main features ef the area which the subject comprises; 
(b) the philosophy, dealing with its boundaries, or its place in the territories of 
knowledge. The science, to a degree, isolates in order to organize; the philoso- 
phy unifies in order to adjust and interpret. The science of education, in other 
words, has to do with the theor}^ of education as isolated by itself; the philoso- 
phy, while presupposing the science, is the theory of the relations of education to 
other sciences and to the known world in general. Philosophy aims to combine 
the analytic movement of science and the synthetic impulse of art in one intel- 
lectual endeavor. In such a process the science inevitably undergoes partial 
transformation and reconstruction. At the present time, owing to the fact that 



1 8 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

education draws its materials from so many sciences, and owing to the remark- 
able development of these sciences in recent years, there has resulted a species of 
intellectual anarchy in educational theory. The single science, by itself, is 
frankly individualistic, and only unconsciously organic at best. On the one 
hand, the psychologist with educational leanings is apt to assert that his special 
discipline is the sole arbiter in educational theory; in other words, that educa- 
tional theory, in so far as it can be made scientific, is simply "applied psychology." 
The sociologist, on the other hand, whenever his inclination takes a practical 
turn, is equally determined that educational theory shall become a part of the 
more comprehensive science of society. It is not a question, however, of identity, 
or of subordination, but of co-operative and complementary service. The worker 
in the philosophy of education must accept with gratitude the aspects of truth 
brought to light by the sciences which it presupposes. He must be mindful, 
moreover, that it is not in its positive contribution to human knowledge, but 
rather in the organization of that knowledge, that the true justification of philo- 
sophic inquiry consists. With the advance of the sciences which his inquiries 
presuppose, his task still remains imperative — to regulate the proportion that the 
contributions of the different sciences may assume, to co-ordinate and interpret 
the new materials, to unify them not only with one another, but with the other 
aspects of man's experience, and thus to restore to him a view of the educational 
process as a whole which is comprehensive, articulated, and wherein the different 
factors have free play.) 

6, The literature of education. 

II. THE PLACE OF EDUCATION IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE 

1. The philosophical bases of educational theory. — (a) Evolution 
and (b) idealism. 

(Evolution and idealism are regarded by the writer as the most logical and 
satisfactory foundations of a theory of education. It is assumed that even in a 
college course in the principles of education some indication may be made of the 
more important implications for educational theory of these two doctrines. On the 
basis of the doctrine of evolution the relationship between the educational pro- 
cess and that of organic and social evolution may be briefly outlined, and the 
influence of the more important factors in the process of spiritual evolution may 
be indicated. On the other hand, the doctrine of idealism — the doctrine, namely, 
which maintains that any developing series can be understood only in the light of 
its highest term, that any ultimate or philosophic explanation must look to the 
end of the process— in this doctrine a standard of interpretation is afforded by 
which the ethical and educational significance of the processes and influences of 
civilization may be estimated.) 

2. The doctrine of evolution as a scientific generalization and as a 
working hypothesis. 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 19 

(While keeping in mind the fact that the doctrine of evolution has not yet 
received its final philosophic form, and still awaits its final philosophic interpre- 
tation, a brief analysis of its content as a working hypothesis may be made in this 
connection. The concept of evolution implies (a) the intelligibility of the world, 
the possibility of establishing a correspondence between the course of nature and 
the mind of man,[between the system of things and the system of human thought; 
(6) the organic oneness of all things in spite of the great contrasts in the spheres 
of mechanism, chemism, organism, and spirit, and the genetic connection of these 
orders of existence; (c) that in the genetic process, or in the process of becoming, 
there is developed out of the previously familiar the qualitatively new; {d) that 
the emergence of the qualitatively new is by means of forces inherent in the 
co-operating elements of the process, which work according to fixed laws of varia- 
tion and under determinate conditions; (e) more particularly, that the course 
which any developing process follows is one of differentiation and integration; 
(/) that in every process of development there are present the two interrelated 
and co-operating factors: (i) the individual existence in which the development 
takes place, and (2) the situation or environment which affords the stimuli or the 
conditions through which the development takes place; (g) that in organic or 
social processes new formations or structures, whether vital, intellectual, or social, 
are to be regarded as instruments or methods of adjustment to specific environ- 
mental conditions.) 

3. The idealistic interpretation of evolution. 

(For both evolution and idealism, the unity of the cosmos, in some sense, 
" is not so much a conclusion to be proved as an inevitable assumption." If we 
believe (a) in the unity of the cosmic process, and (ft) that there has been evolu- 
tion and not mere aimless change, then in our interpretation we are forced either 
(a) to deny the statement ex nihilo nihil fit, or (6) to " read back the nature of 
the latest consequent into the remotest antecedent." The idealist may therefore 
accept Tyndall's remark that matter contains within itself the " promise and 
potency of every form and quality of life," for the reason that the mind is the 
" outcome," and the " realization " of matter, and therefore affords the interpre- 
tation of the ultimate nature of the latter. It would appear to be of distinct 
advantage, therefore, to assume that the law of evolution has been the mode of 
operation whereby the physical, intellectual, and moral natures of man have come 
to be what they are. In thus making man completely subject to the evolution- 
ary law, we are admitting the method of evolution to be the absolutely universal 
method of creation whereof man in his whole being is the highest product; and 
what we gain from this conception is the right to interpret the entire process in 
the light of its end. In other words, the mechanical categories must give place 
to or be supplemented by the teleological, in our explanation of the process. 

The conclusion seems to be warranted, therefore, on the basis of an idealistic 
interpretation of the evolutionary process, that spirit and nature are not wholly 
alien and hostile, but necessary and complementary elements in a unitary spir- 



20 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

ilual process. Religion, art, science, philosophy, as well as the common things of 
our common life, confirm our natural belief that nature is not indifferent to our 
human life, its needs, and its purposes, and tend to establish what seems to be 
the central truth of idealism, that the world is in essence spiritual, and its goal 
the perfecting of the life of man.) 

4. The doctrine of evolution, a means whereby the theory of educa- 
tion may be brought into relationship with the facts of the wider organic 
and social process. — The doctrine of the significance of the prolonga- 
tion of infancy as a factor in the evolution of man. Infancy as a 
period of adjustment. Elements in the educational process, (a) indi- 
viduality and plasticity, (b) environment (physical, social, cosmical; 
from the educational point of view essentially social) . Effects of the 
application of the doctrine of evolution to psychology and sociology. 
Types of education, (a) natural or spontaneous, (b) artificial or telic. 
Education as conscious evolution. 

(The notion of adjustment [conceived as dynamic, not static] expresses sufiS- 
ciently well for the present the essential nature of the educational process- This 
notion is developed more fully in later sections. Here it is enough to note (a) 
that the aim of education cannot be found outside the process itself. One purpose 
of education is the personal reahzation of his environment by the .individual; (5) 
that we must define more fully environment before we can indicate that which 
the individual is to realize or become adjusted to; (c) that "method" in educa- 
tion is fundamentally the mode of the individual's behavior in the realization of 
some phase of his environment. Herein we gain a point of view from which to 
recognize the unity of educational aim, of educational materials and of educa- 
tional methods.) 

III. THE AIM OF EDUCATION AS DETERMINED BY ITS MEANING 

1. Interpretation and criticism of certain familiar educational cate- 
gories: — (a) information, (b) discipline, c) training, (d) efficiency, 
e) culture. The danger of fixed, or ready-made, definitions of 
education. 

2. Interpretation and comparison of various statements of the educa- 
tional ideal. 

3. The aim of education as determined by its meaning. — State- 
ment of the aim of education through an analysis of the educational 
process. The conception of adaptation or adjustment. The social 
purpose and the educational aim. Self-realization and the social 
aim in education. 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 21 

(Kant used] to say that the proper place for delinition was at the end of 
one's inquiries. From one point of view, a true statement of the aim of educa- 
tion can be made at the close rather than at the beginning of such an outline as 
the present. The purpose of the present section is therefore merely to indicate 
in a quite general way the line along which the statement of the educational aim 
must !ie. The fuller working out of this conception of adaptation or adjust- 
ment constitutes, in reality, the fuller exphcation of the educational aim as it is 
revealed in the meaning of education. The one fact which it is hoped will be 
made clear is the fact 0} the organic unity of the aim, means, and method 0} the 
educational process.) 

IV. THE PRESUPPOSITION OF EDUCATION: PERSONALITY AND 
ENVIRONMENT 

I. Personality as the pre-eminent reality m experience. — Self- activ- 
ity as the essence of personality. Stages in the development of 
self-conscious mind: (a) primitive sensibility, (b) subject-object con- 
sciousness, (c) self-consciousness. Mental development through self- 
activity. 

(In the second section, where the attempt was made to bring the educational 
process into harmcny with the life-process, it was found that the essential 
elements in the latter are (a) thing and (b) environment. As a fact of experience 
the educational process presupposes (a) a self or person that behaves, and (b) an 
environment in which it behaves. As will be indicated in a subsequent section, 
the emphasis must in many cases be on Junction rather than on self or environ- 
ment, agent or situation. It is impossible to consider the self apart from its 
environment, or, in turn, environment apart from the coefficient of environment. 
The difficulty with the so-called faculty psychology was that of taking Ihe mind 
as a completely equipped self-existing entity, afterward brought into contact with 
an environment. There was also, on the other hand, the tendency to go to the 
other extreme and maintain that the self in the beginning was practically nil, 
environment was self-existing, a sort of thing-in-itself, capable of generating 
mind in some way. The process of the individual life is a unitary thing, in 
which an ideal distinction may be made between the self and its environment, 
the agent and his sphere of action. It is a process of interaction, the factors of 
which are for purposes of examination separable, in reality inseparable. In the 
present section, however, the problem would be to give some consistent account 
of the nature of the two— self and environment— and their mutual relations. It 
may be briefly remarked, in passing, that the self has reaUty as a center of 
experience, of a particular thought-and-action content, the bearer of the con- 
crete life of an individual. The synthesis of knowledge and of conduct which 
composes that content arises from the self's own activity, and in its own degree 
expresses the soul's intrinsic character. The self, moreover, is no mere aggre- 



22 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

gate of parts capable of existing separately without losing their character. It 
is a systematized unity, the various members of which, appearing at various 
stages in its development, appear with a distinct place and function, each unintel- 
ligible apart from its function in that development.) 

2. The nature of environment. — ^As relative to the specific nature 
of the individual. Not an unchanging form, but a changing process. 
Environment as the medium of self-realization. The environment of 
the human individual (from the eduational or ethical point of view) 
as essentially social. The connection between plasticity and the pos- 
sibility of the control of adjustment, in which education as a human 
institution consists. Adjustment implies {a) participation, or culture, 
(&) control, or efficiency. The first is the conservative aspect of 
education, making for order and continuity; the second, its progres- 
sive aspect, making for change or progress. In the human being, 
adjustment implies conformity of a self-conscious personahty to an 
environment which also is undergoing constant change. 

(On the basis of the community of nature between the self and its environ- 
ment — since they are the terminal aspects of one movement — the nature and 
possibihty of their mutual adjustment or interaction become intelligible. The 
self through its inherent activity is able to maintain itself in a. (social) medium 
that is not alien, but fundamentally of one kin with itself. Its activity — i. e., its 
adaptation through intelligence and will — is not a consequence of the self, but its 
essence. Moreover, not only is the self able to maintain itself in its environment 
through adaptation, but through the same process of adaptation to realize itself, 
for the reason that knowledge of and conformity to the social order which forms 
its environment is essentially the process through which the self is realized.) 

3 Environment as '^civilization." — The basis of civilization in the 
molding of his environment by man in the interests of human life. 
Civilization as the progressive articulation and realization of human 
nature implies {a) science, as knowledge and as instrument of con- 
trol; {h) language; (c) art and literature; (d) social and political insti- 
tutions; (e) religion. 

(In the foregoing analysis— a merely tentative one— of the more persistent, 
dynamic, and cultural elements in civilization, it is assumed: (a) That the most 
satisfactory psychology of race-development is a psychology of action; man's ever- 
increasing wants rising into desires and his perpetual efforts to satisfy these wants. 
The history of man, then, the history of civiUzation, is the hi.story of human 
achievement, (b) That man's achievements in civilization are social achievements 
and have therefore been brought about by some form of social action and 
co-operation. The ultimate social fact, the second factor in civilization, is that 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 23 

of "men acting together" for the sake of interrelated ends, (c) That the ma- 
terial of human activity is nature. Civilization is ultimately possible because man 
and nature, activity and material, are not isolated entities, but rather phases of 
one spiritual movement or process. From the beginning man has been in some 
kind of functional relation to his environment. His life has presented itself to 
him as a series of problems to be solved, {d) That civilization in the largest 
sense represents the methods of the life-process, the tools of the mind invented by 
man in the course of his experience for the registration, organization, control, 
and perpetuation of his experience. It has thus a retrospective as well as pros- 
pective aspect. In civilization, therefore, as the organization of human life thus far 
attained, there are certain fundamental "methods" or norms which are inherent in 
its natural constitution, and which reproduce themselves in all its manifold forms. 
(e) That, in the brief analysis, made above, of these normative elements— science, 
language, art and literature, institutions, and religion— these must be continually 
viewed as interrelated aspects of a common social experience of activity; they are 
the general elements of civilization— elements which constitute the real existence 
of the concrete and organic unity of society. Each of these elements has its retro- 
spective and prospective reference; each represents a fundamental habit and 
accommodation in the life of the race. All together they are functional elements 
within the social process, mediating agencies in the communication or transmis- 
sion of experience, instrumental to the spiritual life of man. (/) That the evolu- 
tion in nature and civilization has its goal in the elevation and expansion of the 
personal life. It will, it is hoped, be made somewhat clearer how necessary to 
any adequate statement of the "Course of Study" is a chart of civilization— a 
morphological or psychological presentation of the great methods or norms 
according to which human experience has been organized, elevated, and expanded. 
Adequately to state what science, art, or religion means in the movement of the 
indJvidual's experience it is ultimately necessary to trace their significance in the 
movement of the spiritual experience of the race.) 

V. INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS 

1. Education as a process of social transformation. — Informal and 
formal education. Two-fold aspects of the process, (a) participation 
in the experience of others and the gradual recognition of the value 
of social life; (6) the achievement of power on the part of the 
individual to express himself in social directions. 

2. Society as a medium for the communication of experience. — 
Moral institutions as meeting points for the functional activity of the 
members of society. As (a) embodiments of a more or loss perma- 
Eent system of purposes,(6) centers for the transmission of experience, 
(c) instruments of social control. 



24 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

3. The educational significance of the great human institutions. — 
{a) home, (h) school, (c) vocation, {d) state, (e) church. Interrelation 
and interdependence of the several moral institutions. 

(A fundamental need of the social mind of the present is such a disciplined 
social self -consciousness as will gradually express itself in more intelligent and 
more thoruugh-going methods of social intervention. There need not be any 
depreciation of the experience of the past, and no honest effort should be under- 
valued. Yet any creditable program for social betterment must be based on an 
adequate investigation and formulation of all the conditions of human wel- 
fare. There is real danger when any one of the so-called elements of the social 
-problem is attacked in isolation from the rest. Such an attempt may tend only 
to increase the popular sensitiveness and irritation. A social theory, issuing in a 
social method, is essential to any approximately adequate preparation for the 
study of the problem of social reconstruction. Only through .such study — a 
study in which all the elements are brought together in organic relation— is one 
enabled to see how social tendencies may be projected into coherent and tenable 
social ideals. In hke manner lack of clearness concerning the objects at which 
education should aim, the ways in which educational principles should be applied 
to the concrete problems of social life, and lack of correlation among the various 
educational factors in society, are responsible for many of the shortcomings which 
exist in present educational practice. Education has become the most important 
method of social intervention. It aims consciously to control the direction of 
the social process. As a method of social control in this larger sense, how- 
ever, it as yet remains largely empirical. It can become rational only when 
educational theory is made an organic part of the philosophy of society. The 
organic interdependence of the two must be recognized. Educational theory 
cannot be studied in abstraction from social theory. Moreover, since the theory 
of education is a part of a larger social theory, it may be well to indicate in 
brief outline a working conception of the term "society. " It will then be neces- 
sary to point out what society, on the one side, and what the individual, on the 
other, contribute to the educational process, how the two are organically related, 
and how society through institutions aims to perpetuate itself, to enlist the indi- 
vidual in its service and provide conditions suitable to his realization. First of all 
it is to be noted that society is not to be identified with the state, the government, 
the family; nor is it the mere aggregation or combination of these. Society or the 
social process is rather the organism of which "institutions" are the organs; the 
latter are functional elements in the larger functional whole. This notion of 
society as a process should be emphasized. As in the mental process experience 
is communicated and transmitted from one level to another, and the continuity 
thereby maintained, so in the social process there is the continual communication 
and transmission of experience from individual to individual. The conservation 
and transmission of experience alone render the continuance of society possible. 
Social experience is projected or embodied in Institutions, and institutions, there- 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 25 

fore, serve to link individuals to one another, and the generations each to each. 
The various institutions, then, may be defined as the objective methods 0} control 
which men working together I or the sake of interrelated ends have thus jar achieved. 
This transmission of experience takes place in every form of society, savage or 
civilized, the difference being that while in the former the activity is for the most 
part unreflective and instinctive, in the latter there emerges a more or less delib- 
erate intervention in the methods oj communication, distribution and transmission; 
and in its higher development as a human institution education becomes a specific 
agency in the general societary process for the systematic communication and 
transmission oj human experience.) 

PART TI. THE COURSE OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 

VI. THE BODY AS THE INSTRUMENT OF THE MIND 

1. The psycho-physical organism.— Yunctiondl relation between 
organs and environment. Structure and function of nervous system 
in organism. The junctional unit. 

2. Principles aj development oj the psycho- physical organism. — 
Differentiation and integration of function. Gradual development 
of nervous system and body as instrument of the mind. Place of 
play, games, gymnastics in the organization oj the body. Habit and 
control. The dualism of mind and body teleological rather than 
ontological, 

(Concerning the relation between body and mind, the physical and the 
psychical, two well-defined types of theory may be noted: (a) the ontological, 
and {b) the teleological [or the evolutionary, strictly interpreted]. According to 
the first, mind and body are disparate and separable entities, each subject to 
growth and transformation apart from the other ; the second regards the body 
as the organ of, and instrumental to, the mind. The theory of the relation of 
body and mind assumed in the present outline is the teleological. As said above, 
it is assumed that the essence of being is one in kind and spiritual. Between 
mind and body there is no essential antagonism or opposition. The mind is no 
fixed entity separable from matter If we are to trust our experience, matter 
cannot be as foreign to consciousness as is ordinarily believed. If the analysis 
made in preceding sections be true, mind and matter, soul and body, are terminal 
aspects of a unitary, living, spiritual experience, organic throughout, and in 
which the so-called nervous system, body, or matter, is instrumental, the machinery 
oj its growth and oj its expanding lije. Many look upon the physical as some- 
thing set over against the spiritual, something that restricts, confines, enslaves. 
It is interesting to note that Plato, one of the first to indicate the spiritual sig- 
nificance of physical training, should in his metaphysics look upon body and 



26 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

mind as disparates, and yet in his theory of physical education he proceeded on 
the basis of the teleological conception of mind and body. For while the speaks 
of gymnastics for the body and music for the soul, he is nevertheless very care- 
ful to insist that fundamentally the soul and not the body is the object of gymnastics 
as well as of music. For Plato, in his theory of education, body and mind are not 
simply two opposites, on the same level. In making the body subordinate or 
instrumental to the mind, he makes it instriraiental to a comprehensive pur- 
pose in life, thus avoiding the one-sidedness which in the judgment of Aristotle 
made the physical training of many Greek states a failure. For both Plato and 
Aristotle the aim of physical education does not lie merely in physical training. 
Rather its significance, its spiritual quality, is found in its effect upon character. 
.Our problem is still the problem of Plato, "to blend music with gymnastic and 
apply them proportionately to the soul." 

According to the view expressed here, the physical with its senses and stimuli 
is the very means whereby we gain freedom. The child feeling the pain from 
the finger thrust into the flame, and thereby restraining itself afterward, is not 
limited by the bodily senses or its nervous system. Rather is its nervous system 
the very instrument through which its freedom is gained. Moreover, just as the 
body, and nature itself, are iiistrumeutal to the self, and no mere hindrance, in 
like manner is the machinery of institutions no mere hindrance, but the very 
medium of escape for the individual from the domination of mere instinct and 
impulse to conscious self-determination. No adequate statement of freedom as 
a ready-made faculty or power of mind can be given in a paragraph, if at all. 
Yet when we take the so-called physical and institutional life, not asm,ere external 
and antagonistic opposites, but rather from the teleological and instrumental point 
of view, we may realize more fully the significanee of the most apparent and the 
most fundamental fact in experience, namely, that the consciousness of self implies 
the consciousness of the not-self, and grows with it, and by means of it. Thus 
eonceiving the self and the world as the terminal aspects of a living organic 
reality or experience, and communicated to us [through consciousness] in insepa- 
rable correlation, we can regard neither one as a resultant of the other. Together 
they constitute a functional manifestation of a unity which is their common and 
absolute ground. What, then, is enforced in this section is the impossibility of 
conceiving a soul or mind in itself, a pre-existing entity, or of a matter in itself, 
a self-contained existence. Keeping by experience, we recognize that subject 
and object are never met by us apart. They are distinctions within a unity, but 
not different or antagonistic entities. And it scarcely need be remarked in pass- 
ing that the doctrine outlined above is neither materialism nor subjective ideal- 
ism. It is an attempt to construe teleologically the relation of mind and matter, 
without obliterating their differences nor reduchig one to the other; securing the 
reality of both in a life whose variety is unity and whose essence is spiritual. 

If it be granted (a) that there is an organic or instrumental relation between 
soul and body, psychosis and neurosis, (b) that our knowledge of the neurosis 
must be through the psychosis, and (c) that gymnastics or physical training is 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 27 

ultimately for the sake of the soul, it would appear that a knowledge of psychology 
of growth, of physical processes and mental imagery, would be of material 
assistance in comprehending the physical stimuli, through play, games, gymnastic 
exercises best suited to the harmonious upbuilding of the psychical life to which 
the physical is admittedly organic and instrumental. In other words, our knowl- 
edge of the genesis of mental life should, to a large extent, be regulative in our 
attempt to control the genesis of the physical life. According to the teleological 
view of the relation between mind and body, the educational purpose is growth 
of the consciousness of self, and the organization of the body for the utilization 
and control of environment, and thus the liberation of the self's latent energies. 
The nervous system, accordingly, is the instrument whose function is the co-ordi- 
nations of the adaptations necessary to the life and growth of the self. For the 
self, the nerv'ous system (a) manipulates environment to its purposes, (b) adjusts 
its organs for the sake of a more complete service. The two phases or the 
organization of the body as the instrument of the mind by means of the sensory 
and muscular system are (a) the process of differentiation and (b) integration. 
The one fundamental and exclusive function of the nervous system is therefore 
the co-ordination or integration of differentiated acts, sensory or motor, to a 
common end. Assuming, then, for the present the various epochs in psychologi- 
cal development during which this process of physical differention and integra- 
tion takes place, the charasteristically play period, for example, may be briefly 
noted in certain of its more prominent needs: (i) Play is fundamentally a psy- 
chological attitude, not an external activity; hence the need of psychological 
appreciation by the teacher. (2) Since the aim of physical development is 
differentiation and integration of the body as instrument of the soul, the neces- 
sity of selection and adaptation of such physical activities as will assist in giving 
the soul as complete possession as possible of its instrument. (3) A thorough 
study of the expression aspects of the various parts of the curriculum, in order to 
indicate more fully their expression values and suggest means whereby present 
practice in those parts may be improved.) 

VII. THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 

I. General fealures of conscious life. — Unity of experience. Con- 
tinuity of experience. Theory of mental elements. Activity as funda- 
mental features of the experience process. 

(Notwithstanding the remarkable development which has taken place in 
psychology in recent years, its positive contribution to the study of society and 
education has been somewhat meager. On the one hand, owing to the preval- 
ence of an individualistic method in psychology, the sociologist has received a 
very inconsiderable amount of assistance from his psychological studies, and very 
often indeed the individualistic tendency in psychological investigation has been 
carried over into the domain of sociology with an effect in certain instances 
little less than baneful. On the other hand, education has likewise profited but 



28 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

little from psychology. Here again the individualistic method in psychology has 
in many instances worked against, rather than in behalf of, sound educational 
theory. But, in addition to this, there is the fact that psychology has been "struc- 
tural," furnishing an anatomy of the adult consciousness, rather than genetic or 
functional, furnishing what might be called a physiology of the mind in the 
process of psychogenesis. It is with this psychogenetic process that education 
is for the most part concerned, and it will be readily seen that until psychological 
investigation becomes both social and functional or genetic in its method, edu- 
cation will receive from psychology little more than incidental assistance. 

In the present outline it is implied that for an interpretation of individual or 
social activities such as will be of most value in educational theory, recourse 
must be had to a functional or evolutionary psychology, according to which the 
psychical hfe, whether in the individual or society, is to be interpreted as a func- 
tion of the wider life-process. For a functional psychology the fundamental and 
central element of the psychical life is not sensation or idea, but an activity. 
Back of this unit of psychical activity — namely of the individual self, or of 
society — we cannot go. In each of these, however, in the individual and in 
society, the one universal activity is that of living, or the life-activity. As a con- 
crete reaUty, then, the individual or the social is revealed to us as a teleological 
process, a system of means and ends, the unity of which is found in the general 
end of control over the conditions of life. All minor activities within experi- 
ence are to be interpreted as partially or completely unified or harmonized 
activities within the larger process of life-activity or realization. The general 
position, then, of a functional psychology is that in determining what conscious- 
ness is, recourse must be had to an examination of what consciousness does. It 
attempts to escape the extreme positions of both {a) empiricism, according to 
which the mind is conceived as a product rather than a principle, and of (b) 
rationalism, which in one form or another conceives of the soul as a pre-existing, 
spiritual entity, endowed with capacities or faculties, prior to the exercise of such 
faculties or capacities, existing behind these as a kind of [transcendental] sub- 
stance or substratum, and before the objective world has as yet disturbed the 
pure unity of its essence. The view of evolutionary idealism is not that the 
mind is mere product or epiphenomenon, nor a mere transcendental spiritual sub- 
stance which [so far as actual experience is concerned] is a pure abstraction, 
but that it is a concrete specific activity constantly directed to the accomplish- 
ment of something, and not only the bearer of the experience process, but an 
efficient agent in its furtherance. From this general conception it follows: 
(a) That in the mental life, as an organic unity, consciousness cannot [without 
a complete departure from reality] be abstracted from its relations. Prior to 
and apart from objective experience, consciousness is an illusion. It will thus 
be apparent how necessary it is in the analysis of experience to keep in mind its 
organic unity; in other words, the organic relation between consciousness and 
its object, the agent and the situation or conditions in which the activity pro- 
ceeds. (6) That just as the life-process is a continuous co-ordination or 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 29 

functioning of the two elements, organism and environment [compare the act of 
breathing which is a functional co-ordination of the lungs as organ, and air, as 
environment], so the mental life is a continuous co-ordination or functioning of 
twoelements, self and environment. Herein we see the difficulty of the empirical 
and rationalistic position. Just as some biologists would identify function 
with organ alone, making environment purely external, or with environment 
alone, making the organ simply a product, so the empiricist would make the self 
a product and not a principle, while the rationalist would make the soul a prin- 
ciple existing prior to its contact with the objective world, and, at most, maintain- 
ing only incidental relations with the latter. On the other hand, the evolutionary 
view of mind maintains that the relation of consciousness or self to objective 
experience or environment is absolute and intrinsic. An isolated consciousness 
is no consciousness at all; it is a self-contradiction, (c) Since the mental life is 
not the outcome of a predetermined self upon an external environment, or of the 
adjustment of the self to a predetermined environment, neither t!ie self nor the 
environment is eternally fixed in itself, but both change in the movement of the 
life-process. In the functional movement of the mental life both the self and the 
environment are modified and determined. Both are essentially transitional, in 
a continual process of becoming. The self is real only in so far as it continues 
to act, to become, to progress, {d) Self-consciuusness is not a subsequeiit or 
higher growth of consciousness, but in rudimentary form at least is a quality of 
all consciousness. It is consciousness with the emphasis on the subject rather than 
the object, the agent rather than the situation.) 

2. The place 0} knowledge in experience. 

(A brief note may serve to indicate the line of treatment of the ]:>lace of 
knowledge in e.vperience, from the point of view of a functional based upon a 
genetic psychology. All knowledge involves both percepts and concepts, sensa 
tions and ideas or their combination. These may be briefly discussed from the 
point of view of (j) origin, (6) content. Sensations: (a) The biologist maintains 
that the organs of sense had their origin in the problem of the life-process. Such 
variations as were of .=Jervice in the life struggle were selected; others, offering no 
positive contribution, were discarded. The sense-organs were thus in their origin 
organs of adjustment, methods of economy; through natural selection their 
increasing perfection meant more perf'ect adjustment, i.e., increasing self-mainte- 
nance on the part of those possessing them. Thus, biologically, the knowledge 
mediated by tlie sense-organs had its origin in the needs of the life-process, it was 
an instrument of control, in securing food or escaping danger, (b) In the child 
again, activities in the form of inherited instincts and impulses precede sensa 
tions. His characteristic is impulsiveness; he is essentially a motor being. The 
child's curiosity is preparatory to some activity, a prelude to behavior. It is ever 
in the interest of some experiment on the part of some bodily organ, usually the 
hand or mouth. For him the objects of his environment are the particular acti\ ilies 
which they suggest, and distinct sensations are the sensible news of his behavior. 



30 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



(c) In the adult consciousness, likewise, the sensation is a sign, and has significance 
only as part of a largerwhole. When do we have sensations ? Examine such experi- 
ences as taking the car, looking at your watch, the clock's ceasing to tick, walking 
over, an unaccustomed road, moving the ears, etc. It will be found in such 
experiences that sensations either regulate activity, or are signs within the experi- 
ence circuit, i. e., the retrospective reference; or, through their appeal to attention, 
they furnish the materials of a new problem, i. e., their prospective reference. 
Only a very brief statement of the nature of ideas can be made in this connection. 
The concept or the idea, as is true of sensation, has a retrospective as well as a 
prospectiv^e reference. It is {a) a register of past experiences, a habit, a method 
of ordering sensations. On the other hand, an idea embodies (6) a plan of 
action. Its function within experience is not only to organize experience, but to 
institute or furnish the method of future experience. Its function, therefore, is 
essentially mediatory, instrumental. Thus the definition of idea is in terms of its 
function, of its position in the movement of experience. It is the instrument of 
the growth of experience from the less rich and less definite to the richer and 
more definite forms. To illustrate, take the judgment, "The pencil is sharp." 
"Sharp" is an idea, but sharpness does not exist in reality; only as a quality, 
emphasized within, or abstracted from, experience. Why, then, fonii the idea or 
conce])t of that which does not exist ? Simply because the idea, so emphasized 
or abstracted, will furnish a sign, a plan, a method of future action. The. idea 
"sharp," then, is ultimately instrumental to a larger experience process, e.g.j that 
of writing. Ideas, then, in providing a method or plan of action made for 
economy within experience, enable us to anticipate, and thereby control future 
experiences. They are thus constructions of the past and of the future. Herein 
is their kinship with science. Ideas are plans of action. Laws of science are 
constructions of the past and future behavior of those realities with which man 
has to deal. Ideas arid sciences are thought-constructions for the registration and 
control of experience. Sensations, ideas, science, are thus seen to be regulati\e 
and mediatory in the conduct of life. 

From the point of view of a functional psychology all phases of psychical 
activity may be grouped about two fundamental types — habits and accommoda- 
tions. Activities once successfully performed tend to be selected, to persist, to 
become habits. Just as soon as experience becomes problematic, however, i. e., 
as soon as some break occurs in the adjustment process [consequent upon the 
failure of some habit in the individual, or of a custom or institution in social 
experience], thought, in the form of discrimination, attention, and association, 
emerges to secure a new accommodation, and thus repair the break in experience 
through the establishment of a new habit. So long as habit [individual, social, 
racial] suffices — in other words, so long as experience flows smoothly, there is no 
occasion for the exercise of thought, since there is no problem to solve, no sense 
of failure, and consequently no search for a better method — i. e., a better accom- 
modation or adjustment. From this point of view the function of thought is 
mediatory between experience and experience; in other words, between some 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 



31 



habit experience, activity] which has failed to satisfy, and some new accommo- 
dation Twhich, if successful, will be selected and become habit] which will restore 
harmony to experience once more. Thought, then, as mediatory has a twofold 
aspect: {a) retrospective, i. e., interrogating our present habits, or modes of expe- 
rience leading to a consciousness of failure; {b) prospective, through conscious- 
ness of break in experience, searching for the new accommodation and the more 
harmonious and satisfying experience. Thought, then, arises within the experi- 
ence-process [whether in the individual or the race] out of activity, and is ulti- 
mately for the sake of activity. If experience or life were uniform, feelincr and 
mstmct would suffice for its continuance. If, however, there is to be progress 
withm experience, thought must emerge as doubt and as inquin'. It must bring 
order and control into experience; it must expedite the experience-process and 
ehmmate the waste entailed in mere instinct and feeling.) 

VIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIENCE 

I. Experience as an organic w«//:v.— Experience as dynamic, and 
following, therefore, in its changes the processes of increasing differ- 
entiation and integration. Distinction between growth and develop- 
ment oi experience or of the mental hfe; {a) by mental growth we 
understand the expansion, an increase in the stock of our experience; 
{h) by mental development we understand the elaboration or recon- 
struction of experience into more complex form, and an increasing 
organization and control of it. In mental development are found 
the following characteristics: (a) an increase in the content of experi- 
ence; (&) an increasing complexity of mental processes; (c) an increas- 
ing faciUty and power among the various mental processes; {d) an 
increase in the organic unity and soHdarity of experience. 

2. Main distinctions within the unity of experience.— Th^ dan^rer 
of hard and fast separations. Experienee as a teleological svstem"^ a 
system of means and ands. Habits and accommodations. 'Experi- 
ence as problematic. The emergence of sensation, idea, thought (as 
discrimination, attention, association). Interest and imagery. Obser- 
vation, comparison, judgment. Memory. The place and significance 
of feehng and emotion. From will to will. Will no separate faculty. 
Will as self-realization. 

3. Epochs in the development of experience.— The continuity of inner 
experience. The child's equipment. The development of the child- 
mind. Stages of development. Phases of psychogenesis. Acquisition 



32 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

on the basis of inherited tendencies. Imitation, communication, expres- 
sion. Imagination. Play. Growth of sense of self . Growth of reflect- 
ive interest and attention. The signs and psychological effects of the 
period of adolescence. The development of experience due, not to a 
growth of separate faculties, but to an increasing complexity of activity 
and interest. Educational implications. 

4. The forms of ideal construction. — Knowledge as idealization. 
Idealization as teleological. Knowledge as the technique of action: 
theory and practice. The fundamental forms of ideal construction 
.involved in the building up of experience: (a) the external world, (b) 
the self; or, more definitely, (a) perceptual construction, (b) scientific 
construction, (c) aesthetic construction, (d) ethical construction, (e) 
philosophical construction, (/) religious construction. 

(In a theory of education an attempt must be made to determine in some degree 
the nature of the bond or unitary principle which holds together the phenomena 
of consciousness as such. It must have some doctrine which will indicate the 
possibility of certain indubitable facts in education and ethics; e. g., continuity 
of experience, n'sponsibility, progress. It will be remembered, of course, that the 
nature of anything can be determined only in so far as it is found within experi- 
ence, and that only on the basis c)f what a thing does within experience can we 
form a conception of what it is. Now, i;i our conscious experience the uniting 
principle among its phenomena is revealed, not merely as imitary, but as one pos- 
sessed of a specific character, viz., a self or subject. It will thus be recognized 
that the ?tlf is a basal concept in education. The term might be used as identical 
with the totality of the experience -process in its unity and continuity — as includ 
ing both self-conscioubuess and consciousness of the object. Used in this sense, 
it is, as has been pointed out, essentially an organic uraiy. Or we may use it as 
a terminal aspect of the experience-process, with the emphasis on the agent 
rather than on the situation within that process. On the level of sensations we 
seem forced to regard the self as a principle of activity which manifests itself, as 
Herbart and Lotze would say, as an internal principle of reaction against that which 
would impair its individuality. This reaction is not to be conceived, however, so 
much an act of self-conservation as of self-realization, for the reason that [as has 
been pointed out in previous sections] the stimulus or environment is not a for- 
eign or alien something, to which the mind isj mechanically related, as though 
mind and matter were di.-;tinct entities instead of terminal aspects or phases of a 
unitary process of experience. According to the present doctrine, a self or person 
is no mere succession of states of consciousness. Within the self there is admit- 
tedly a stream of conscious states, but beneath this continuity of ideas the func- 
tional activity inherent in the experience process becomes the foundation for that 
permanence of selfhood which we attribute to a person — in a continuity of activities 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 33 

rather than of ideas, of instincts and habits rather than of any stream of conscious 
states. The self is real only in so far as it continues to act, to function, to 
become, to progress. In the self, therefore, is found a process returning upon 
itself in such a way as to retain its existing quality or individuality. While chan- 
ging, it is nevertheless permanent, remaining one, as it does, in its life-process, i. e., 
one in and through the unity and continuity of its activity — its character. A per- 
son, therefore, may be defined as a self-conscious subject, distinguishing itself 
from, yet realizing itself ir. and through, the objects it knows and the ends it 
chooses. Self-activity is the essence of personality. Through self -consciousness 
it can become its own critic; !. e., through taking the standpoint of the universal, 
the self, as an element within experience and as its bearer, or agent, can take up 
an attitude of approval or disapproval to the factors which have entered into the 
process. Man's life is progressive because the self-consciousness through which 
he returns upon himself is not an endowment, but a process. We may, there- 
fore, summarize our conception of a person thus: (a) self -active principle, creative 
in the objects it knows and the ends it chooses; {b) self -separative, orself-estranoin};; 
in other words, a person is never an exclusive self, but one whose progress con- 
sists in a continual transcendence of his exclusivenes?, and in a realization of him- 
self in and through that which seems at first to be set in opposition to him.) 

IX. THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT 

I. The social nature of individual experience. 

(In preceding sections it was noted how dependent is the individual on his 
social relationships. The self is bi-polar unity, containing within itself the ter- 
minal aspects of a unitary personal relation, the so-called ego and alter, the lat- 
ter being also part of a common thought- and action-content. Thus the individual 
is in society to the degree that society is in the individual. The indi- 
vidual soul is an existence, which appears and lives in the sociality of human 
beings. When we give attention to the social aspect of the course of per- 
sonal development, the individual is seen to be a social fact, the outcome 
of a social effort.^ The individual to begin with is an energy, of course, as en- 
dowed with inherent qualities and instincts, but these are made his own, are 
actualized only through an effort, through an action. The law or principle 
of this effort, of this actualization is sociality. In other words, the human soul 
is made only in the presence of other human souls which are themselves in turn 
only in the process of making. At first, therefore, we may insist on the reality 
of individual and social interaction, even though from the point of view of a 
truer idealism the idea of community should be substituted for that of inter- 
action. The social life or continuum with the subsidiary processes of differen- 
tiation and integration is a life manifesting itself through a system of organs, and 
these organs, in coming to realize the community of the social life, become social 
members or persons; and the social life becomes integrated and unified only in 
so far as its members become partakers of the social purpose and yield them- 
selves up to the realization of that purpose. 



34 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



It may be said, then, that the individual provides the "matter" [in the Aris- 
toteHan sense] of experience, while society provides the " form." The individual 
brings instincts and impulses; society brings " values " and typical activities. 
P2xperience in the individual is the outcome of these two " energies," namely, the 
qualities, impulsive and instinctive of the individual, and the stimuli, interpreta- 
tive and regulative, of society. It is a false antithesis, therefore, to isolate and 
contrast the individual and social aspects of experience. It will thus be recog- 
nized how in human society there go;s forward the process of differentiation and 
integration, the emergence of the individual, of the person, and yet his increasing 
consciousness of his own dependence upon the labors of others. The process of 
social evolution from one point of view is the result of one individual learning to 
perform some one function, which may enable another to give his attention to 
something else. Society is thus the body, or medium, in which this tendency to 
reciprocity, inherent in human nature, has become incarnated. Society thus im- 
plies a fundamental interdependence between its members, an increasing reac- 
tion of one upon another, as well as a continual interchange of services between 
them. There thus emerges a category constitutive and regulative in the social 
process — that of vicar iousness, in other words, the conception of the ultimate 
reality of society as conditioned by the just interchange of services among its 
members. Our present social order is stable to the degree in which it secures 
this just interchange of services among its members; it is insecure, or at least 
transitional, to the degree that we have as yet only partial interchange of ser- 
vices, and at times an out-and-out repudiation of social responsibilities on the 
part of some [or perhaps many] of its constituent members. Thus it will be seen 
how the many phases of the social situation may be analyzed in terms of the 
inadequate realization of vicariousness. In this idea of the interchange of ser- 
vices we find a category without the use of which we can take no step toward 
an adequate insight into or analysis of the social situation. 

For example, we know how during the past century in industrial life the man 
was in a large measure displaced by the machine. Production was enormously 
increased, and we may expect it to increase in the future more and more. There 
certainly is a sense in which, with the increase of productive power, the factor of 
individual capacity has decreased. It may be that the worker's position is in 
many respects better than before, and yet there may be more than a mere mone- 
tary division between rich and poor. The question rather is, What share does 
the worker have in what he produces ? What are the moral and spritual values 
for him in the work produced by him, but appropriated by another, who has 
neither the disposition nor the knowledge to give back to the worker some social, 
moral, or spiritual equivalent of his work ?) 

2. The meaning of social membership. — Typical cunceptions of 
the relation of the individual to society: (a) the individualistic or 
monadistic, (b) the socialistic or monistic, (c) the duaHstic, (d) the 
organic. The latter view attempts to adjust the claims of the other 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 35 

three in a theory more conformable to the facts. It treats the indi- 
vidual as a junctional element in a larger junctional whole. Accord- 
ing to it the two factors, the individual and society, are regarded, 
not as two separate modes of being, but rather as two phases of one 
reahty, distinctions of function, of modes of operation within a unity. 
Within the unity there is relative independence of parts : yet the parts 
are what they are in virtue of their relation to the whole. In other 
words, apart from society the individual has no Hfe; his purposes 
can be reaHzed only by realizing the larger purposes of society. 
The presuppositions of such a view are {a) identity of interest 
between the individual and society; (6) the possibility of individual 
development (and hence education) lies in his increasing participa- 
tion in the social consciousness and in social activities. The ideal 
of society is one which the independent or joint efforts of its mem- 
bers as individuals, capable of thought and action, may help to reahze. 
The truth oj the individual lije, accordingly, is jound in a jully organ- 
ized, i. e,, moralized society; and oj society in a jully realized indi- 
vidual. 

(In th^ fragmentary notes furnished in this section an attempt is made merely 
to suggest some of the more important phases of social theory which would of 
necessity be discussed in an ordinary college course in educational principles. 
The fuller discussion of such material would necessarily be reserv^ed for courses 
of a more advanced nature in the philosophy of education.) 

3. The characteristics oj the socialized individual. — {a) Moral in- 
sight, {h) virtuous disposition, (c) consistent action, {d) efficiency. 
Self-realization as a process in which the self {a) comes to be more 
completely defined, i. e., individualized; (&) but defined through 
membership in a larger unity. Education as necessary to the pro- 
duction of a person. 

4. The process oj social control. — ( See also Section V.) Social 
order and unity. The grounds of social control. Experience in 
the individual the outcome of two "energies": (a) the qualities, 
impulsive, instinctive, deHberate, of the individual agent; {h) the 
stimtdi, as norms, convictions, methods, values, regulative and 
interpretative, of society. Means for the social control of indi- 
vidual development : (a) imitation and suggestion, {h) habituation, 
(c) instruction. The place of education in personal development. 



36 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

Conservatism and progress. Progress through individuals. The 
growth of individual freedom. 

PART III. EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL 
X. THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 

1. Essential continuity of the educational process. — Reasons for 
lack of continuity in the organization of the school at the present 
time. Adjustment of motives underlying various types of school 
and various phases of school organization. 

2. The school as a moral organism. — The school as a miniature 
community. The social function of the school. An embodiment 
of the social purpose. It simplifies existing social life. Presents 
a selected environment. The teacher as organizer of the com- 
munity life of the school. Respective functions of the several types 
of school in mediating the spiritual possessions of society to its 
members and assimilating them to the social purpose. The prob- 
lem of discipline in the school. School atmosphere and discipline. 

3. The school as an instrument of social progress. — The social 
order. The ethical possibilities of the course of study. Apprecia- 
tion of the meaning of social membership. The development of 
the social consciousness. Not only must the school be an instru- 
ment of social order, it must also become more and more an 
instrument of social progress. Of course, at the present time the 
danger is lest it may become an instrument to individual success, 
rather than one of social order or social progress. Yet the prob- 
lem at present is to make the society of the school reflect that ideal 
toward which the wider social life is struggling. 

(The educational process is fundamentally a social process and is rendered 
possible through (a) the plasticity of the individual, and (6) a particular environ- 
ment. The control of this process of participation in social experience, as was 
indicated in a preceding section, is exercised by the various human institutions. 
The policy of conser/ing the social order by means of a system of education is 
practically as old as society itself. The school as a form of institutional life is 
t};e special instrument devised by society for maintaining the existing standard 
of civilization by conferring upon the individual its spiritual possessions, and 
thereby enabling him to become a bearer of the social purpose. 

As in the wider life of society, so in the school, the problem of education is 
the solution of the equation between the individual and society. The "social 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 37 

personality" seems to rej^resent the ideal. In other words, the offering of the 
individual to the educational process, or to society, is a capacity [at first in the 
form of mere impulse or instinct, of course], a power of action; in other words, 
himself as an organ or instrument; on the other hand, society's gift to the indi- 
vidual is (a) a method by which his impulses, instincts, etc., may be regulated 
and organized, and thereby his experience brought under control; {b) a worth, an 
interpretation, a significance, a value. Selfishness, of course, arises in the indi- 
vidual in so far as he regards any one of his powers or capacities as belonging 
to himself alone, and not as a medium for social functions; on the other hand, 
society treats the individual unjustly, causing his activity to become mechanical 
and deadening, when and where it withholds from him the (luickening and ex- 
panding influence of its spiritual possessions, in the way of science, art, and litera- 
ture. Thus the school, in society, must function in mediating the fund of spiritual 
values, interests, ideals, worths to the individual, and it must do this to the 
end that the individuals coming under its influence may be enabled to recognize 
— rather, to realize — the spiritual significance of their work. Education as a 
whole aims to saturate the activities and experiences of men and women with 
ideal values. Certain advantages and dangers in school education may be noted 
in passing. Advantages: (a) From the point of view of the state, it is a legiti- 
mate form of self-preservation, (b) Provision is made against the imperfection 
or contingency of private effort, (c) It provides a more complete social medium 
for the development of independence, emulation, leadership, than purely indi- 
vidual or private instruction, (d) It supplies the individual's first experience of 
public opinion and the reality of social judgment, justice, order, co-operation, 
fair play, etc. Dangers: (a) The danger that individuality may be submerged. 
(b) The danger in school education from overpressure in a broad sense, of quan- 
tity versus quality, (c) The danger of the school's becoming an aggressor 
against the legitimate function of other institutions — functions, indeed, which 
only the latter can adequately perform. The school is a miniature community. 
The education which goes on in the school partakes of the same general social 
character of all education. Its reality is relative to the reality of the social life 
found within the school. Its ideal is to vi^iden and deepen the social conscious- 
ness of its members.) 

XI. THE INTELLECTUAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 

I. The course of study and the method of instruction. — The error 
of making hard and fast distinction between subject-matter and 
method. Social experience as a spiritual organism. The course of 
study as representing that organism (the corporate or interrelated 
aspect). Method as the form of personal realization and penetra- 
tion of the intellectual order of the school (the individual or differ- 
ential aspect). Studies as modes of seLf-reaHzation involving y 



38 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

(a) instincts, interests, activities pointing to social life; (b) norms, 
interpretations, values conferred by society upon the individual. 
The two groups: (a) sciences, representing the processes (control) 
by which social life is sustained; (b) humanities, which interpret 
and determine the relative values (appreciation) of the various 
forms of social activity. The aim of instruction as mediating 
between the intellectual order of the school and the mind of the 
pupil in such a way that the latter may conform to its law, not as 
a matter of constraint, but as the natural expression of his own 
mind. 

(A very persistent conception of the relation of subject-matter to method 
may be stated thus. On the one hand, the subject-matter is classified and 
arranged as a pre-existing objective material, ready to be imported into the 
mind. Method, on the other hand, is regarded as a purely formal affair, an 
altogether psychological matter, as though the mind were self subsisting apart 
from its relations [or its environment], and had certain powers or modes of 
acting in and for itself. Just as for philosophic dualism there was an intrinsic 
separation between mind and matter, so in much of the modern discussion of the 
course of study, there is implied an intrinsic separation between mind and 
subject-matter. The relation of subject-matter and method thus becomes as diffi- 
cult of comprehension as the Cartesian dualism of matter and mind. If against 
the Cartesian view of mind it be maintained that the so-called subject [mind] 
and the so-called object [the world] are equally the differentiated aspects or 
results of a unitary process, we are inevitably forced to the conclusion that subject- 
matter and method are not completely isolable entities, but are fundamentally 
the terminal or differentiated aspects of the process of development of a unitary 
experienced) 

2. The making of a course of study. — The course of study pre- 
sents two main problems : {a) the question of selection (differen- 
tiation), (&) the question of arrangement, (integration). 

A. Bases for the selection of school studies. — (a) Sociological. 
Social life as principle of unity. Does the study (as a group of 
facts or principles gathered together and systematized) embody 
some fundamental phase of social experience ? Does it represent 
a fundamental manifestation of or conviction in the spiritual life of 
the race ? What great human interest is fundamental ? (&) Psycho- 
logical. Individual activities as principle of unity. What part 
does the study play in helping the individual to interpret his crude 
experience and to control his powers with reference to social ends ? 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 39 

(The problem, then, of the course of study is in reality the problem of 
adjusting (a) the agent or person and {b) the demands and opportunities of his 
sphere of action. There is a sense in which the individual is the ultimate fac- 
tor in the movement of the educative experience. That is, in order to be edu- 
cational, facts, ideals, activities must not only be appropriated, but transformed 
into the knowledge, purpose, or activity of the individual. This, however, does 
not mean that education is the product of the individual alone. For the require- 
ments of the situation furnish the stimulus and control the response of the agent, 
and thus the direction of the movement of individual experience. In other words, 
in the determination of the course 0} study, not the interests and activities 0} the 
individual, but the ideals, the requirements, the activiti-is oj society constitute the 
final standard. 

On the other hand, it is to be kept in mind that subject-matter is not some- 
thing hard and fixed, external to the mind. The educational process is not the 
outcome of a mind with pre-formed faculties exercising upon external material, 
nor is it the adaptation of the mind to a material completely pre-determined. 
It is a process in which the organization of the material goes hand in hand with- 
the organization of a self or person [compare the distinction between the logical 
versus the psychulopjcal view of studies]. The constitutive and defining element 
in a study is the particular interest or impulse it represents in the organic unity of 
experience. Studies fundamentally represent constructions by the mind of the 
world within experience from particular points of view. They arise through the 
interests, attitudes, and tensions, in the process of self-maintenence and self- 
development. But they exist only in the process of the experience of individuals. 
As "educational" material, so called, studies have existence only in the experience 
of some individual. The individual as subject of the experience, as the one 
through whom the movement of experience takes place, is the ultimate center of 
differentiation and integration in which mental development consists. The soul 
at any stage is an organic whole, and analysis and synthesis [or differentiation and 
integration] are correlative elements in the one organic movement of experience. 
From this point of view, therefore, it must be maintained that the nature of the 
mind at its various levels is an indispensable element in the determination of the 
course of study. In other words, just as for the theory of knowledge, subject 
and object are but the terminal aspects of the unitary process, so the mind nj the 
individual with its attitudes, interests, instincts, on the one side, dinAstudies, on the 
other, are fundamentally the terminal aspects or limits of a unitary, educative 
experience-process. In the process of learning the two are organically united.) 

B. The problem oj arrangement. — As has been indicated above, 
there are the two problems, the one of differentiation, the other of 
arrangement: How, on the one hand, shall the power of differentita- 
tion of the unitary experience into its inherently important forms 
be secured, and how, on the other hand, shall the various materials 



40 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

presented be arranged with reference to each other, so that the differ- 
entiation may be furthered, and yet the unitary character of the 
learner's experience be maintained ? This is the so-called problem 
of correlation. Consideration of typical plans for the correlation of 
studies: (a) Herhartian theory of correlation by concentration; (b) 
correlation by co-ordination (Harris) ; (c) constructive activities of the 
child as center of correlation (Dewey). Principles to be observed, 
{a) unity, {b) continuity, (c) adaptation, {d) reinforcement. 

(.The essential element in the problem of correlation is the recognition of the 
psychological side of studies, i. e., the recognition or realization of, e. g., history 
or arithmetic from the child's point of view, what it is as a form or phase of living, 
present personal experience. Instead of assiiming differentiation and moving back- 
ward, we should assume the organic unity of social experience, or the interrelation 
of studies [studies intrinsically related, since social experience is unitary], and move 
forward with the child. The difficulty lies, it would appear, in substituting the 
adult's consciousness for the consciousness of the child. The problem is: How 
out of a given unitary experience [a circle of thought, as Herbart would say, with 
which the child comes to school], through working it over, remaking, utilizing, 
defining it, there gradually emerge the various studies. From this point of view, 
teacher and pupils co-operate in making the course of study. 

It may perhaps be worth while briefly to note some of the more important 
implications of the doctrine of the social nature of consiousness in the organiza- 
tion of the course of study: {a) The necessity of continuity between the informal 
education of the home and the more formal education of the school, (h) The 
experience of the child with its habits, interests, and activities forms the true 
center of correlation in the educational process, viewed from the psychological 
side. From the social point of v^iew, the principle is found in the typical social 
activities and interests, id) If social experience is unitary, it follows that in 
reality there is but one subject-matter, now emphasized from one point of view, 
and now from another, in accordance with the level of experience attained by the 
pupil, {d) Character must be developed and trained, not so much through 
special instruction, as in the entire society of the school, individuals, studies, 
method, discipline, atmosphere, {e) It is necessary to maintain organic connec- 
tions or balance between studies representing the facts or processes and those 
representing the ends or values of social life.) 

3. The various studies as instruments of experience. — Studies as 
plans of action for the interpretation and control by the individual of 
his crude and unformed experience. Interpretation and control. 
The processes and ideals of social life. The sciences and the 
humanities. Their organic unity in the upbuilding of the personal 
experience of individuals. 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 41 

4. The method oj instruction. — The question of the relation of 
instruction to education, one with the question of the place of 
knowledge in experience. The nature of the learning process. The 
image as the medium of instruction. The aim of instruction: (a) 
correction, (b) organization, and (c) expansion, of experience. The 
function and conduct of the recitation. Examinations as (a) retro- 
spective, (b) prospective. The social possibilities of the recitation. 

XII. THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF EDUCATION 

1. Types of school as selective agencies in social life. — The 
accepted divisions, primary, secondary, higher, a convenient classifi- 
cation for administrative purposes. Their interdependence. 

2. The problem of school education in democratic society. — The 
question of administration of education and school supervision. 
The adjustment of education to contemporar}^ needs. Industrial 
education. Industry and art. Scholarship and service. The 
university and the professional training of teachers. 

3. State interference in the education of the individual. — Federal 
and state control. Social and moral basis of state control in educa- 
tion. Limitations of state control. Education in the school and its 
relation to social and moral progress. 

Ill 

In the preceding section the question of the possible content of a 
college course in educational principles was given at least a tentative 
answer. It only remains to make a brief reference to the relation 
which such a course bears to more advanced courses in the phi- 
losophy of education. 

Philosophy has been named the mother of the sciences , and only 
by slow degrees has there grown up the family of the sciences. Now 
it is their fashion to dispute her authority in the household of 
knowledge. The future progress of both science and philosophy, 
however, will be through complementary service. Both deal with 
human experience. The various sciences differ not so much as deal- 
ing with different facts of experience, but rather as deahng with 
experience as a whole in so far as it can be studied from different 



42 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

points of view. Philosophy attempts to co-ordinate the results of the 
varit )us sciences, to introduce a principle of proportion, and to exhibit 
the organic unity of the experience process. Philosophy, therefore, 
is not a mere aggregate of the sciences, but that organism of thought 
or knowledge of which the various sciences are the organs. It does 
not aim so much to bring to light new facts as to reveal the signifi- 
cant connections of the facts brought to Hght by the various sciences. 
Philosophy gives significance to the sciences, while the sciences in 
turn vitalize and give concreteness to philosophy. In making use 
of the principle of proportion in its synthesis of the facts of science , 
philosophy in a sense becomes a critic of the sciences. Divide et im- 
pera is the motto of science, and the scientific specialist, finding an 
hypothesis suited to the explanation of the phenomena which he has 
examined, is under the continual temptation of making use of it as a 
measuring hne for higher, or, indeed, for all orders of, existence. 
This is perhaps one of the gravest dangers of contemporary science, 
the analogous application of accepted principles from one order of 
existence to another. An important function of philosophy must be 
to examine such a principle or hypothesis, understand it, and indi- 
cate . to what extent it affords an explanation of phenomena of 
another order, and wherein it fails. Philosophy is thus through its 
very criticism a synthesis of the sciences, but through a higher 
medium than the sciences themselves explicitly recognize. 

As a working hypothesis in educational theory the doctrine of 
evolution has become indispensable. There is an ever-increasing 
body of evidence that it points in a direction along which truth lies; 
and the justification of any hypothesis is found in the existence of 
facts inexplicable without it. It was maintained above, however, 
thai "its true significance can be realized only when the general doc- 
trine is submitted to the interpretation put upon it by philosophy; 
in other words, when its results are brought into relation with the 
other elements of our experience." In attempting a statement of the 
philosophic form which the doctrine of evolution would take when 
made basal in a philosophy of education, the following considera- 
tions at least would have to be reckoned with: {a) that the real is 
one with actual experience", that it is inteUigible and forms an inter- 
nally coherent system, and that with the evolutionist's notion of 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 43 

adaptation, according to which an individual purpose can be realized 
only through accommodation to certain definite conditions, is bound 
up a belief in the world as a systematic unity, and no mere chaos; 
(6) that, therefore, evolution is distinctly teleological in its outcome; 
(c) that the real or the absolute, since it is at least both intelligible 
and of significance for the realization of human purpose, is the liv- 
ing state of a being in whom is intelligence and consciousness of 
purpose; {d) that reality or the absolute, as immanent in all its mani- 
festations, is not aHke and equally present in all; {a) that fully to 
know the meaning of our individual experience would simply com- 
plete insight into the nature of reality as a whole; in other words, 
that complete knowledge of self and knowledge of reality are ulti- 
mately the same thing; (/) that, therefore, reality is spiritual, and 
that "the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it 
veritably real. ' ' It would appear, accordingly, that when the impli- 
cations of evolution are indicated, they are seen to be at one with 
philosophic idealism in its conception of the world as a system of 
reason. To know the world is progressively to construe it in terms 
of intelligence. 

A philosophy of education is founded on a theory of the proper 
conduct of life; and a rational theory of hfe must be based on an 
examination of the nature of man and his relation to the cosmos of 
which he forms a part ; in other words, on a conception of the nature 
of reality. The answer which an mdividual gives to the question. 
What is the good for man ? is ultimately determined by the view he 
takes of the general nature of rfality. Nor is the educational end 
an independent conception. In human life the judgment of value is 
inextricably bound up with the judgment of fact. A philosophy of 
ethics or of education is influenced by our estimation of reahty as 
truly as by our conception of mind. Our theory of education is 
ultimately one with our philosophy of life. It is difficult to imagine 
how the man who regards the ultimate reahty as mere blind force 
can consistently view the process of education in exactly the same 
light as the man who thinks of the world-process as the living ex- 
pression of a personal spirit, knowledge of whom and Hkeness to 
whom is conceived as man's supreme concern. It is only necessary 
to survey in retrospect the great epochs in history to realize how dif- 



44 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

ferent conceptions of the nature of ultimate reality have been par- 
alleled by ethical and educational ideals correspondingly diverse. 
The entire history of the religious, moral, and intellectual life of 
mankind bears witness to the organic connection between religious 
and moral practice, on the one hand, as between the philosophical, 
ethical, and educational theory, on the other. 

In its attempts, therefore, to furnish a rational account of any pro- 
cess of becoming, which forms the subject-matter of the evolutionary 
method of study, idealism seeks to gain validity for the process by 
a threefold interpretation: {a) from the point of view of its meta- 
physical ground; (b) from the point of view of the relation of the 
objective world to experience; (c) from the point of view of the 
evolutionary process as fundamentally teleological. 

What was said in the preceding paragraphs was put forward 
merely in the way of suggestions toward a working statement of the 
relation of a course in the principles of education to one in the 
philosophy of education. Just as the philosophic habit of thought 
is necessary to the complete appreciation of the achievement in any 
special line of enquiry, so a course in the philosophy of education 
should be the more complete realization of all that is implied in the 
college course in the principles of education. 

As in philosophy, so in education particular solutions will 
perish while the problems live on. While it is to be acknowledged 
that the final test of any study must be its effect upon our action, 
the conduct it will inspire, the degree to which it keeps the passion 
for humanity to the fore, it must be as freely acknowledged that 
the more valuable results of a theoretic study of education are not 
immediate; they are nevertheless quite as inevitable and far-reach- 
ing. With the increasing complexity of the spiritual life of man, 
the problem of education likewise becomes more complex. In this 
very fact the need of a theoretic study of its possibility and its 
significance becomes more manifest. Algernon Sidney held that 
there were but two things of vital importance — religion and politics. 
In its best sense, education is an integral part of both. In some 
future day education may take the ancient and honorable place 
once held by poHtics in the minds and hearts of citizens. To achieve 
and retain that position, the serious and reflective study of the 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 45 

problem of education — the study, which, according to Mr. Spencer, 
involves all other studies, and the study in M^hich the education of 
everyone should culminate — in its organic unity and continuity 
with the other great movements of the human spirit, must take the 
place of mere kindliness of heart, or the intellectual inertia which 
mistakes enthusiasm for insight and premature opinion for reasoned 
experience. 

DISCUSSION 

Frederick E. Bolton, head of Department of Education, State University 
of Iowa: In administering a college course in the principles of education, the 
great desideratum is to try to formulate a body of knowledge which will give 
undergraduate students an idea of the meaning of education and its problems, 
a knowledge of its processes, and especially the laws underlying 'all rational 
procedure. In so far as possible, it is desirable to present material which in a 
certain sense will be practical. Inasmuch as the majority of undergraduates 
who study education in a college department intend to go into the practical work 
of teaching, it is important to fortify them, as well' as possible in the brief 
time which they devote to the subject, concerning the best means of securing 
definite results in education. The majority are not so much interested in the 
science or the philosophy of education as they are in its practical problems. All 
courses in education should seek to deal with fundamental principles, and not 
dole out dogmatic statements of practical means and devices; but at the same 
time no principles should be considered with which the student cannot see 
some relation to the educative processes. They are not primarily concerned 
with the place of education among the sciences, nor with ontological and 
teleological meanings of education or of its laws. As I view it, the course in 
principles of education should be on a par with the course in principles of 
physics, or in principles of biology, principles of psychology, principles of 
political science, etc. Now, a course in the principles of any of these subjects 
attempts to set forth the main problems with which the science deals. 
Elementary courses attempt to select those principles which have frequent 
application in eveiyday life. The course in the principles of physics deals 
with elementary notions of matter motion and force, and everyday illustrations 
and problems are sought. It would seem to me that in a similar manner the 
college course in principles of education should seek elementary principles which 
will better enable the student to accomplish the purpose of education, namely 
to produce modifications in individuals and in society in harmony with the ideals 
and ends of education. Education is a process of adjusting individuals to their 
environment, natural and accidental, and the environment which is created 
through ideals held by society . and by individuals themselves. All education 
has to do with the development of the individual in accordance with his poten- 



46 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

tialities and the ideals of education which are set up. It is, if we may so term it, 
a practical'science, an appUed science, the same as engineering is an applied 
science. Engineering does not deal with ultimate theories of matter, force, and 
motion except as they are important in considering practical ends to be secured 
through the application of forces. 

I believe that I am in thorough accord with Dr. MacVannel as to what 
should be included in the ideal training of the teacher. From the outline I 
gather that nearly all of this training should be incorporated in the course in the 
principles of education. On the question of the distribution of the work I 
should differ, if I am correct in my interpretation of the outline. It is quite 
possible that a complete exposition of the topics mentioned in the outline would 
make a revision of my interpretation necessary. Much depends upon the 
proportionate place given to the several topics. In a course in the principles of 
education no complete treatment could certainly be given of all the topics 
mentioned. 

A cours'e in the principles of education should seek to include the founda- 
tions rather than to encompass all knowledge about education. It is rather an 
EinleMimg than an Encyklopadie. Professor MacVannel's outline appears to me 
encyclopaedic. The complete training of the ideal teacher ought to include all 
that he indicates and even more. I believe I am in full agreement with the out- 
line of topics except that the course in the principles must be limited. Professor 
MacVannel apparently includes child-study, educational psychology, methods of 
instruction, the course of study, educational organization and administration, 
the various studies as instruments of education, etc. In fact, the only subjects 
of education not included are the history of education and school law. He 
would also undoubtedly draw extensively upon the history 'of education in his 
search for educational principles and for examples to illustrate them. 

Although a complete and logical treatise on the principles of education 
might include a consideration of " the course of study and the method of 
instruction," "the making of a course of study," "the problem of the arrange- 
ment" of the course of study, "the various studies as instruments of experi- 
ence," "the organization and administration of education," etc., it is question- 
able, from a practical point of view, whether they should be given consideration 
in the undergraduate course. Mere passing notice would, at any rate, seem suf- 
ficient. Each topic of the scope of the foregoing is siifficient to form a course 
in itself, and the introductory course should do no more than define their relation 
to the general problem. In the principles of psychology the fields of abnormal 
psychology, comparative psychology, child psychology, adolescent psychology, 
etc., are defined and drawn upon for illustration, yet no separate chapters are 
devoted to them. In departments of political economy there are usually ele- 
mental courses designed as an introduction to the leading principles of economic 
science, but there are special courses in currency and banking, public finance, 
taxation, transportation, distribution of wealth, etc. 

Similarly in the college course in the principles of education, the work should 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 47 

be concentrated upon the fundamentals designed to introduce the student to the 
many special problems. The course of study, and the organization and adminis- 
tration of education, should be regarded as accessory rather than as funda- 
mental. IMankind was being educated in a fundamental sense of the term teons 
before schools were organized, and before special subjects were arranged or 
methods thought of in connection with them. The laws underlying processes of 
development and modification are what should occupy the attention of the 
student in this elemental survey. A study of the special means and agencies of 
education and forms of social organization should be given in other courses by 
special names. Secondary education, the kindergarten, administration and 
supervision, methods in special subjects, etc, each deserves attention as a distinct 
and separate course. 

Although in the main the topics indicated are such as should find place in 
courses in a department of education, yet certain sections are purely philosophi- 
cal in their nature. Of this character, mention may be made of Section VII on 
"The Nature of Experience." This is a problem of epistemology, and Professor 
MacVannel has not hesitated to go into a discussion of empiricism and rational- 
ism. This I beheve to belong to the domain of philosophy as such. Certain 
other sections, while less strikingly belonging to philosophy, are largely concerned 
with its specific problems. Of such a character Section VIII might be instanced. 
This section deals with the development of experience. He discusses such points 
as "experience as an organic unity," "distinction between growth and develop- 
ment of experience or of mental life," "increase in the content of experience," 
"increasing complexity of mental processes," and "increasing faciHty and power 
among the various mental processes," and the "increase in the organic unity 
and solidarity of experience," "experience as a teleological system," "experience 
as problematic," " the emergence of sensation, idea, thought, attention," etc. 
All of these belong either to psychology or to philosophy. Of course, every 
thoroughly trained teacher ought to have mastered these topics, but they are 
beyond the comprehension of the ordinary undergraduate. They would occupy 
an amount of time which could not be afforded them. 

According to Professor MacVannel's definition of the philosophy of educa- 
tion, there is little place for this subject in an undergraduate collegiate course in 
education. To be sure, every instructor ought to have come to philosophical 
ideas of education, but the ordinary undergraduate student is not mature enough 
to grasp their abstractions. Even if they were sufficiently mature, many have 
not studied philosophy as such, which should be a prerequisite. Desirable as it 
may be, it would seem to me impossible to attain. 

Personally it would not seem to be a serious departure from strict terminology 
to denominate the course in principles as a course in the philosophy of education. 
For a long time the term " natural philosophy " was in good repute. It signified 
not necessarily a metaphysical consideration, but the study of physical phenomena 
and their laws. Likewise we employ the term "political philosophy," without 
feeling restricted to the consideration of the nature of the state, but feel free to 



48 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

discuss phenomena, laws, and principles. Similarly, under "philosophy of edu- 
cation" may we not include a study of the meaning of education and the body of 
facts, laws, and principles which will enable us best to attain the most intelligent 
and far-reaching results in education ? 

With the limited time at my command, I hesitate to suggest the scope of work 
and the topics which T regard as essential in an undergraduate collegiate course 
in the principles of education. However, hoping that it will be borne in mind 
that what is given is merely suggestive, I shall make the attempt. It will be seen 
that many of the topics are included in Professor MacVannel's scheme. What I 
suggest indicates in a general way the course which I have been giving for some 
years in this subject. The first third of the year in the three-hour course is 
devoted to the biological aspects of education. In this section there is an attempt 
first to enlarge the notion of education, aiming to have it regarded as practically 
coincident with life and experience. Of course, there is the ideal side toward 
which individuals will strive, but the attempt is made to impress the student with 
the fact that every experience leaves its ineffaceable effect upon all organisms. In 
order to convey this idea, we begin with a discussion of the effects of experience 
upon simple animal and plant life, and the general modifications produced in the 
adjustment of such life to surroundings. Some familiar, non-technical facts in 
the evolution of plant and animal life are considered in their relation to the ques- 
tion of adaptation and adjustment. Due notice is taken of the facts of adjust- 
ment as manifested in such illustrations as the change'of the eyes of cave animals, 
gradual modifications of plant and animal life, the change of animals from sea 
life to land life, some of the retrogressions, etc. A general study of the gradual 
evolution of sense-organs and the nervous system is made, because these illustrate 
in an excellent way the gradual modifications produced by experience in the race. 
After this general survey, the subject of recapitulation is considered by means of 
lectures, and through (Jiscussion of such chapters as Drummond's "The Ascent 
of the Body," "The Scaffolding Left in the Body," " The Arrest of the Body," 
"The Dawn of Mind," and " The Evolution of Language." These discussions 
naturally lead to a consideration of the culture-epochs theory, the lengthening 
period of human infancy, and the importance of infancy in education. This in 
turn leads to a brief consideration of the periods of childhood, adolescence, and 
maturity, largely from a biological point of view. These are followed by a dis- 
cussion of such topics as instinct, heredity, from fundamental to accessory in 
growth, the brain as an organ of mind, some of the facts of psycho-physic cor- 
relation, and the reciprocal influence of mind and body upon each other. Before 
leaving this general field, thorough and designedly practical discussions of the 
importance of physical development and culture for education in general and for 
mental development, fatigue, habit, physical and mental hyg'ene, and play, are 
considered. 

The second section of the year is occupied with what some authors term 
educational psychology, and others term the psychological 'aspects of education. 
In this section the first topic considered is that of memory. It naturally grows 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 49 

out of the biological discussion of instinct, heredity, etc. Included in the subject 
of memory is that of association. Following this, we discuss imagination, imita- 
tion, training of the senses, apperception, formal discipline, feeling, volition, 
motor training, induction, and correlation. Periods of mental development and 
the specific topic of childhood and adolescence receive definite consideration, 
though more exhaustive treatment is reserved for a distinct course in child-study. 
The genetic point of view is emphasized throughout. 

Concerning the last section of the work I speak with still more diffidence. 
Just as sociology has not become a well-organized science by itself, so the course 
in social aspects of education has not thus far been well defined. I have been 
searching for some years for a working outline of topics for this section. Thus far 
I have not succeeded to my entire satisfaction. We group our work around such 
books as Button's Social Phases 0} Education, Butler's The Meaning of Education, 
Spencer's Education, Hanus' Educational Aims and Educational Values, Dewey's 
The School and Society, Henderson's Education and the Larger Life, McCunn's 
The Making of Character, etc. 

Throughout, an attempt is made to make the work as concrete as possible, 
and to show its relation to matters pertaining to the schoolroom, the home, and 
to the everyday conduct of the students themselves. Each topic, is treated with 
considerable thoroughness and detail. No endeavor is made to secure an abso- 
lutely systematic and ultra-logical system. The charge of being unsystematic 
and incomplete would not be resented. There is no desire for a system. As in the 
elementary stages of any subject, the first requisite is a body of fundamental 
facts. There is time enough later to evolve an all-inclusive and all-exclusive sys- 
tem. I am not aware that even " the doctors " have yet fully settled this question. 
The psychological order is the one sought. What is intelligible, full of Hving 
interest and of largest probable importance in the life and work of the student- 
teacher are the criteria applied in the selection of materials. The student ver- 
dict is given much weight in deciding. 

The experience of the last five years gives reasonable assurance that a course 
such as suggested has a definite place as undergraduate work in college. It has 
proved of apparently increasing importance in the State University of Iowa. 
Starting with twelve students in this course in 1900, the numbers have increased 
each year until now there are seventy taking the work. This course has drawn 
more students than those in methodology, high-school problems, or the history of 
education, and these latter have been taught by the same instructional force as 
the principles of education. The attitude of the students themselves leads me to 
feel that the facts which are dealt with are such as can be understood by the 
average juniors and seniors, and such as to enlist their interest in the work of 
education. We feel that they are stimulated to look at their work as teachers 
and at child-life in an entirely new way. Their work is not to be as mere dis- 
tributors of arithmetic or geography, but as promoters of the development of 
human beings freighted down with an ancient past, and who must grow toward 
ideals if they ever attain them. The testimony of graduates after entering the 



5° 



THE SCHOOL REVIEW 



field of teaching is also encouraging, and leads us to feel that the students them- 
selves consider that they have laid hold of some guiding principles. Some 
radical changes in the way of elimination and extension have been made in the 
light of students' reactions toward various phases of the work. An increasing 
number who do not expect to become teachers also take the course. They seem 
to consider it as liberalizing and cultural as any branch of university instruction. 
They find in it an interpretation of much that has been meaningless in their own 
lives, in school activities, and in the life of society. 

Dr. H. H. PIorne, professor of philosophy in Dartmou^ College: These 
comments are based upon a careful reading of the paper in the typewritten out- 
line. They reveal probably the bias of the writer more than the nature of the sub- 
ject about which Dr. MacVannel is writing, and so they are themselves more 
subject to criticism than the original before me. There are three kinds of com- 
ments I should like to make upon the whole paper, viz., the strong points in 
general, the weak points in general, and certain weak points in particular. 

Upon the strong points in general I will not pause a tmie proportionate to their 
desert. I pause at all only that I may not seem unmindful of them in the 
critical part that is to follow. My excuse for pausing but briefly upon them is that 
no eulogy of mine could make them more effective than they appear in the body 
of the paper. Among these strong points in general are the deeply philosophi- 
cal tone pervading the whole, the earnest spirit of reflective inquiry concerning 
educational principles, the emphasis laid upon a fundamental unity in all educa- 
tional experience, a careful analysis of the elements of variety that enter into 
this unitary whole, and the recognition everywhere of the dynamic and func- 
tional as against the static, and isolated. These merits, in my view, incompar- 
ably outweigh any demerits to which I shall now refer at greater length. 

As to the weak points in general, it simply must be observed that "the defects 
of the qualities" of the paper are in evidence. There is a certain vagueness and 
abstractness about the paper as a whole; good theory, no doubt, one may feel, 
but what the bearing is does not always appear; the principles are theoretical 
rather than practical; the ideas are often not stated in complete sentences, par- 
ticularly in the latter part of the paper (e.g. Section XII p. 105); and the defiiu- 
tions are not obviously clear (e. g. of "method" on p. 35, viz.: "Method or the 
form of personal realization and penetration of the intellectual order of the 
school"); the first 80 per cent, of the paper, or the first two parts, might very well 
be called other things than the principles of education, such as, the philosophy 
of society, the philosophy of evolution, the philosophy of human experience, or 
even the philosophy of education. The sum of the criticism at this point is that 
the author has insisted that thinking should control as well as interpret experi- 
ence, but his own educational thinking here does not control educational 
experience; in short, the practical bearings are not shown. 

As to certain weak points in particular: "The science of education aims at 
securing the method by which the educational process may be increasingly con- 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 51 

trolled" (p. 81). The definition of the science of education is exclusively prac- 
tical, and as such is inconsistent with the definition of science as including 
"knowledge" given at the bottom of p. 80. 

"The twofold aspect of education as a science" (p. SoV In so far as edu- 
cation is of the body, other aspects than the "psychological" and "sociological" 
would come in. 

The definition of idealism (p. 82) is in exclusively teleological terms, whereas 
the ontological element should be included, as at the top of p. 84. 

To state, that the goal of the world is "the perfecting of the life of man" 
(p. 84; perhaps elevates man more than his position in the cosmos warrants. It is 
what Professor Royce calls "atrocious Philistinism." Man doubtless has a 
large place in the goal, but perhaps is not the goal itself. 

The heading and subheadings are not logical on p. 84, where III and (3) are 
identical. 

The use of the word "ontological" in the parentheses on p. 89 as an evident 
synon}Tn for "dualistic" is not happy. 

So the use of the word "psychological" in "Play is fundamentally a psycho- 
logical attitude," at the middle of p. 91 is, not the best perhaps. 

On pp. 92 the terms "genetic or functional" seem to be used synonymously, 
which is very misleading. 

On p. 95 the definition of "growth" is hardly to be distinguished from {a) 
under the account of "development^'. 

Concerning the use of the word "experience," on p. 95 et passim, it may be 
permitted to ask for a definition of experience, and an account of whose the 
experience as a totality is. 

" A self-active principle, creative in the objects it knows and the ends it chooses" 
(p. 97) looks like the "subjective idealism" which the author has rejected. 

The distinction between the sciences and the humanities, on p. 102, or that 
between control and appreciation, leads to the inquiry whether there is not an 
element of control in the humanities and of appreciation in the sciences, as Pro- 
fessor DeGarmo holds. 

I cannot conclude without referring to the attitude of Dr. MacVannel toward 
the self and its environment, " since they are the terminal aspects of one move- 
ment " (p. 90). This is the view I have been accustomed to present myself, but 
since the work of James, Dewey, Woodbridge, Schiller, Bawden, and the whole 
noble company of pragmatists, I suppose we are no longer justified in doing so 
without at least considering whether the consciousness is not a mid-term of rela- 
tion between beings, instead of an end-term. 

And as a last paragraph, since dynamism is such a thorough presupposition 
of the whole discussion, I cannot but ask for a defense of the reality of time. 
These last paragraphs emphasize the feeling I have that the whole paper is too 
theoretically philosophical for a college course in the principles of education. 
What college men want in a course in principles of education is first sound 
practice, and then only enough theory to understand it. 



52 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

John A. Bergsteom, professor of education, Indiana University: At the time 
of the preparation of this discussion only Part II of Professor MacVannel's paper, 
in outUne, was ready for distribution. This deals with the " College Course 
in the Principles of Education." 

Professor MacVannel does not set forth the general principles which should 
be observed in the formation of such a course; he presents instead a system of 
topics, which he believes should be taken up in the classroom in dealing with the 
subject, and adds suggestions as to the mode of treatment. For one who wishes, 
as does the present writer, to consider the general policy involved, it is therefore 
necessary to infer from the different topics and suggestions of the document what 
this policy may be; in other words, to treat the paper as if it were an historical 
source, though one cannot expect in this case the historian's usual immunity from 
correction by the author. 

One notes, in the first place, that the paper is written by a philosopher more 
Platonic than Aristotelian in his views and methods. Evolution and idealism are 
regarded as the foundations of the theory of education, but ideaUsm is the view- 
point. The truth of the evolutionary series is to be understood in the light of its 
highest, not its lowest, terms. " Mind is the realization of matter; " and " the 
world is in essence spiritual and its goal the perfecting of the life of man." 

In the next place, there is an almost Hegelian intolerance of the lack of rela- 
tion of certain opposites, which are conceived of as merely extremes of the sam.e 
set of connected facts and are brought into harmony from some higher point of 
view. Thus: " Mind and matter, soul and body, are terminal aspects of a unitary, 
living, spiritual experience," in which the lower ser\^es or should be made to 
serve the higher. "Just as for the theory of knowledge subject and object are 
but terminal aspects of a unitary process, so the mind of the individual, with its 
attitudes, interests, instincts, on the one side, and the studies, on the other, are 
fundamentally the terminal aspects or limits of a unitary, educative experience." 
"The individual is a functional element in a larger functional whole," namely: 
society; and " the individual and society are regarded, not as two separate modes 
of being, but rather as two phases of one reality, distinctions of functions, of 
modes of operation within a unity." Then, too, " subject-matter and method 
are but dififerentiated aspects of a unitary experience." 

These statements, together with other analogous considerations, serve to call 
needed attention to the fact of inner relationship of each pair of correlates, but 
by no means make the scientific study of the details and effective character of 
this relationship superfluous. 

In the third place, one notes that Professor MacVannel places a very high value 
on the philosophic work of systematization. " The theory of education should set 
forth not a set of educational categories or principles, independent or isolated one 
from another, but an interrelated system ; " " the philosophy of education is the 
theory of the relations of education to other sciences, and to the known world in 
general." 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 53 

When one reflects that it is only by the proper distribution in thought of the 
different factors in the field of education that their relative value is apparent, that 
one may thus be saved both from fads and from anachronisms, that the system 
stimulates to mental effort, especially in the direction of its own elaboration, and 
that it gives tone, force, and singleness of purpose, there are evidently urgent 
reasons for emphasizing it. Yet the emphasis implied, not simply in these state- 
ments but in others throughout the paper, is so great that it might lead to the 
obscuring of certain other valuable modes of thought. Such great values can 
be ascribed to a system only when it has grown up in connection with years of 
experience and of scientific study of educational facts. Should the systematiza- 
tion of educational concepts, particularly such as are developed from the view- 
point of philosophy, be attempted at an early stage — unless it be in simple 
language and as a mere preface — they may make little more than a verbal series, 
justifying Occam's theory of the flatus vocis. The comprehension of the topics 
may be so vague and lacking in vitality that, while the student can, for example, 
locate such a subject as method in the system, and know that it is "funda- 
mentally the mode of the individual's behavior in the realization of some phase 
of his environment," he may be so absorbed and satisfied with its location that 
he fails to work painstakingly at its different parts tUl theory and practice 
combine to make him expert in its use. 

Besides, many practical educational problems, which the aim Professor Mac- 
Vannel assigns to the science of education, as that of "securing the method by 
which the educational process may be increasingly controlled," would authorize 
us to keep in mind, are of a character to demand for solution a knowledge of 
current practice and a few practical rules; and still others require a high degree 
of technical knowledge of certain topics, as in the case of school hygiene. It is 
not often that the practitioner, if he knows a system, has time to consult it in all 
its parts, and perhaps still rarer that he does so. The possession of a large 
number of ready but unsystematized solutions for the multitude of practical 
problems that arise is certainly a valuable asset. However, to estimate the value 
of the system fairly, one must bear in mind that it may exert a slow but definite 
influence, which may extend even to these details ; yet the number of educators 
who in practice have acted contrary to their general theories is quite alarming to 
one who may wish to pin his faith to systems. Should attention to the general 
system be so preponderant, as in fact it sometimes is, that the special principles 
of certain departments in which the student wishes to labor are not mastered 
with sufficient enthusiasm or technical skill, the results will not be the best. 

In most subjects, in recent years, effort has been mainly directed, not toward 
systematization, but toward the investigation of special topics — a plan which, in 
the present state of development of the subjects, has been at least partly justified 
by results. Though the educational field is large and inviting for work of this 
kind, less has been done than in many another. A department with a large field of 
important facts is like a country with vast natural resources : it is sure to have a 
great future, if it develops them. The present revival of interest in philosophy, 



54 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

of which we have notable instances even among men concerned with natural 
science, suggests, however, that, even if comparative, inductive, specialized studies 
must be the daily task, systematization may also from time to time be profitable. 

We turn now to another aspect of Professor MacVannel's paper. The con- 
ceptions with which he maps out the pedagogical field are of the most recent. 
Not simply do we find a synthesis of evolution and idealism placed at the founda- 
tion of the structure, but many applicable concepts from functional and genetic 
psychology, sociology, and institutional study are introduced. All mental 
processes are said to be merely aspects of inner adaptations to outer con- 
ditions, the higher serving with increasing efiiciency the ends of action. Science 
is a method for the control of experience. " Civilization represents the tools of 
the mind invented by man in the course of his experience for the registration, 
organization, control, and perpetuation of his experience." " The possibility of 
individual development lies in his increasing participation in the social conscious- 
ness and in social activities." " Education is therefore essentially a process of 
social interaction between the two factors of the experience process, society and 
the individual ; " and " dynamic adjustment expresses sufficiently well the essen- 
tial nature of the educational process." "All phases of psychical activity may 
be grouped about two fundamental types, habits and accommodations." 

Much of the customary educational phraseology is either set aside for, or 
supplemented by, philosophical terms. Thus, the formation of a course is 
regarded as a double problem of selection and arrangement, or of differentiation 
and integration, of subjects. This predominance of the philosophic temper leads 
also to what seems to be an undue emphasis for educational purposes of certain 
philosophical aspects of the terms employed. Thus, in the discussion of the 
concept "self," more attention appears to be given to its unifying function, its 
relation to self-consciousness, and the not -self, than to the problem of its proper 
training and development. 

The scenery in Professor MacVannel's sketch of education is so new, and the 
strokes so large and detail-obliterating, that one might well question if any of the 
old pedagogical heroes who have dealt with the subject more or less directly would 
at first imagine, if awakened, that they had in view familiar territory. Even so 
late a writer as Bain would certainly wonder how things could change so much 
in the short period of thirty years. 

It is doubtless true that one of the chief ingredients of the great educational 
classics has been a better and more accurate representation in words of the 
highest ideals and forms of culture of the particular time in which they were 
written, as Spencer represents some aspects of evolutionary pedagogy, and Vives 
that of the Renaissance. The task of bringing to bear upon educational prob- 
lems the best suggestions of present thought is certainly a great and indispensable 
one, but there is a prerequisite to its successful execution by the student, namely, 
the comparative, historical study of solutions of the same problems previously 
attempted. This is not so merely because it is the custom of present-day 
scholarship to require such a treatment of its topics, or because the contemporary 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 55 

student has on all sides been trained in evolutionary modes of thought so that 
he learns better in this way, but because the scholar and student alike amass 
instances in the study of the history of educational ideals, methods, and con- 
ditions that enable them to build up genuine concepts on the basis of fact and to 
conceive plans of work, the precise value of which can to a considerable degree of 
accuracy be estimated from past experience. Moreover, past ideals and methods 
have usually not wholly disappeared; they persist either in their original form in 
more conservative institutions; or they have been somewhat transformed, yet not 
so much so but that there are present-day homologues. If the principles of 
education are to be studied so as to give an " increasing control " over educational 
affairs, then the study of educational principles incorporated in the ideals and 
work of men or institutions at different times, whose evolution and efficiency 
may to a considerable extent be ascertained, should have a very great value. In 
this way the chief stages in the evolution and the morphology of the different 
concepts and principles may best be ascertained. This aspect of the matter may 
be dealt with either independently in a course in the principles of education, or 
in connection with the history of education. 

Some believe, it is true, that in education as well as in philosophy the intro- 
duction of the historical method has destroyed creative speculation; that by it 
the scholar has taken the place of the system-making genius. This, if true, is not 
wholly a loss, and at any rate may be regarded as merely a temporary phase. 
Time is required for the mastery of the new point of view, and theories, and 
even systems, will surely be constructed in the future, more true and effective 
because of the corrective foundation given by the period of historical scholarship. 

For the solution of the problem as to when and how the principles of educa- 
tion should be taught in a college course, it will be of advantage to consider 
their mode of production, and the corresponding grades of validity and useful- 
ness. The actual concepts and principles possessed by the same person of 
different things, and by different persons of the same thing, vary enormously, 
and many classes and sub-classes could doubtless be made of them. These 
would range in grade from the more or less valid practical conclusions drawn by 
teachers from their own experience to the concepts elaborated by the most pains- 
taking scientific and philosophical study of the most gifted minds. A division 
into three classes, somewhat like the familiar Hegelian or Platonic, will serve the 
present purpose. In the first; are placed the usually ill-defined, often contra- 
dictory, but tenaciously held and applied, customary educational views and 
precepts, partly derived from experience and partly from desultory reading and 
hearsay. In the second are placed those which have developed out of, but 
beyond, those just mentioned by some years of laborious, comparative study, so 
that each concept and principle has as its foundation a sufficiently large and 
typical group of instances to make it clear and adequate. Moreover, they have 
been formed by personal work by the student, in accordance with the best 
available methods, so that he has both ability to continue their elaboration, and 
the disposition and skill to apply them to practical affairs. The training secured 



56 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

is sufficient for effective scientific or practical work in one or more of the 
different departments of education. 

By continuing the application of the historical and inductive, or scientific, 
method something more may be effected, and a third and higher grade of prin- 
ciple produced. For one thing, the concepts and principles of the different 
aspects of education, historical, psychological, and practical, can be more and 
more elaborated and perfected; but the effort may also be made to develop more 
comprehensive views, not independently of, but on the basis of, the scientific 
work so far done, so that the different parts of educational work may be 
adequately adjusted with regard to other parts, and the whole of education with 
regard to the social service it is to perform. This will result in what may be 
termed educational statesmanship, which will know what degree of emphasis to 
place upon different parts of pedagogical study, or what should be added or 
omitted; and, in the practical field, what should be undertaken both from the 
point of view of inner work and from that of outward propaganda to make 
education fulfill its function as nearly completely as possible. In general, univer- 
sity courses can give students such a training that they wUl be well advanced in 
the formation of the principles of the second type, and will have made an impor- 
tant beginning of those of the third; but both types of principles, especially the 
third, will need subsequent study and the test of experience. 

In the consideration of the problem, a difficulty is introduced by the fact that 
as far as the mental process is concerned, concepts and principles have a great 
range; and the most trival as well as the most profound may thus equally be 
called by the same name. Moreover, the studies of the highest questions may 
be introduced with persons of such immaturity, or lack of special preparation for 
the work, that the results at best may not be so good as those of the first-class, 
and, in fact, may be so nearly merely verbal, confused, and ineffective that they 
can hardly be called principles at all, at least when measured by the standard 
of efliciency. In the sense that Comenius would introduce "metaphysics" in the 
" Maternal School," the principles of education might well be begun in the 
kindergarten. In the sense that Plato uses the term "philosophy" and would 
have it studied, after a course in traditional subjects and science, at from thirty 
to thirty-five, courses in college and university can only give an extensive 
preparation in the science of education, with some beginning of its philosophy. 

There is still another difficulty: while definite and efficient conceptions of the 
highest principles cannot be obtained except through prolonged study, neverthe- 
less there may be dim anticipations years before, induced by reading, disscussion, 
and personal meditation. Such anticipations might by the untrained be easily 
mistaken for genuine science and philosophy. 

The topics proposed by Professor MacVannel are such as would in the main 
fall into the third group; and it is very important to consider by what stages of 
study and by what methods they are to be mastered. 

The entire course of pedagogical study may be said to have as its special 
purpose the building up of adequate concepts and principles with a view to 



COLLEGE COURSE IN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 57 

scientific and practical efficiency; and the essential thing, in the first place, is not 
so much a course bearing the title "Principles of Education," as courses in which 
there may be a study by scientific methods of the data that make them possible. 
No department representing any great branch of knowledge could teach its 
principles in any other way, unless it meant by principles, not the fundamental 
and elaborated concepts of science, but merely its initial steps. 

The relation of such an introductory course of initial steps in the depart- 
ment of education to a course or courses for the teaching of the principles of 
education is a very important problem in department pedagogy. The character 
of the course will have much to do with the interest and progress of the student. 
As the student may enter the department with many traditional views, many per- 
sonal problems and many but vague notions of modern education, he has some 
foundation for his work; but he lacks technical psychological and pedagogical 
terms, and especially such methods of work and points of view as a systematic 
study of what he knows and can easily assimilate will give him. An introduc- 
tory course of from three to five periods a week for a year would prove of 
service to him. It would consist of a simple introductory survey of the chief 
characteristics and terminology of modern education, with the main historical 
outlines, and within range of the student's experience, interest, and personal use. 
There will also be some discussion of ideals of education, of methods of study 
and teaching, and of personal and school hygiene, and of educational psychology 
and practial ethics. Many of the topics listed in Professor MacVannel's paper 
would receive a preliminary treatment. 

This will, to be sure, be a study of the " Principles of Education," and in 
the old days might possibly have been mistaken for a substantial course in the 
subject. It is, of course, merely introductory, and should rather be given the name 
"Introduction to the Study of Education" than " Principles of Education," which 
would then be reserved for principles of a greater degree of elaboration. How- 
ever, by this means a beginning of the study of the principles of education may 
be made. This should be continued in the second year for about three periods 
a week by the study of the general history of education, chiefly from sources; 
and in the third by a comparative study of contemporary schools and school 
systems. In this study the principles of education will be taught in their 
historical setting and evolution, which will aid much in making them practical. 
These two courses shonld be studied, not simply by a review of the works of 
educational reformers, nor merely even by the study of educational facts in their 
relation to social, economic, and institutional conditions, which would, to be sure, 
do much to make them scientifically comprehensible, but as a study in educa- 
tional dynamics to bring out the effective practical value, personal and social, 
of the different elements of culture. 

Work in educational psychology should also be continued. While the study 
of the character of mental processes at different stages, the order of their 
development, and social interactions, is more particularly the end in view, 
the starting-point for a psychological study, alike for the alienist, the student 



58 THE SCHOOL REVIEW 

of children, or the student of animal intelligence, is normal adult psychology, not 
so much in its intricate technical analysis as in its familiar, personal, and practi- 
cal aspects. Training in the psychological or pedagogical laboratory is in the 
same way a necessary technical preparation for investigations in genetic 
psychology. Possibly this might occupy the equivalent of three hours a week 
for a couple of years, running parallel with the two years devoted to historical 
and comparative pedagogy. 

We may suppose that during these three years some collateral courses will 
have been pursued by the student; that something in biology and paleontology 
may have been done to give an initial grasp of evolution in those fields, and also 
something in sociology, philosophy, and literature. In addition, he may have 
begun the reading of French and German educational literature, which, aside 
from the facts gained, will, by reason of differing and contrasting terminology, 
help to free him from bondage to verbal suggestion, and so aid in the formation 
of concepts. 

The student has the foundation for the study, observation, and practice of 
various lines of educational work as well as for further scientific training. But 
by the very nature of his work hitherto, he has dealt with separate aspects of 
education; for the highest efficiency either in the science of the subject or its 
practice, he must learn to organize his knowledge better, and bring what is 
pertinent from the several different departments of the subject to bear in the 
solution of the problems that come up. An advanced course in the principles 
and philosophy of education, conducted either by lecture or by recitation 
methods, might be an aid in the matter. If a course bearing this title is offered 
at all, it might be at this point. It should not so ranch, be classificatory as 
designed to make knowledge already largely acquired convertible into practice. 
The most efficient means to this end will probably be the preparation of work in 
the seminar and the investigation necessary for the final thesis. The relation of 
philosophical, sociological and psychological concepts to education, with 
which Professor MacVannel's paper so largely deals, would be among the best 
topics for the seminar, each, perhaps, for a year's work. We may imagine that 
the student will spend, according to his purpose, one to three or four years in 
these advanced lecture courses and seminary exercises, in observation and prac- 
tice, and in his investigation. 

In the consideration of this problem of the teaching of the concepts and 
principles of education, attention has been given especially to factors which 
promote their development and efficiency, that is, to the collection of data, the 
method and duration of study, and the influence of observation and practice; all 
of which determine, not only the adequacy of the concept as a means to action, 
but also its future development and usefulness. From this point of view, the 
entire course of educational training is involved. In general, I have endeavored 
to represent in this discussion what I conceive to be the scientific study of the 
principles of education as contrasted with a method too purely philosophic. 
This scientific point of view is at the same time that in which I believe. 



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